The word _captivity_, even when it refers to civilised lands and peoples, conveys, we suspect, but a feeble and incorrect idea to the minds of those who have never been in a state of personal bondage. Still less do we fully appreciate its dread significance when it refers to foreign lands and barbarous people. It was not so much the indignities to which the captive Britons were subjected that told upon them ultimately, as the hard, grinding, restless toil, and the insufficient food and rest--sometimes accompanied with absolute corporeal pain. "A merciful man is merciful to his beast." There is not much of mercy to his beast in an Arab. We have seen an Arab, in Algiers, who made use of a sore on his donkey's back as a sort of convenient spur! It is exhausting to belabour a thick-skinned and obstinate animal with a stick. It is much easier, and much more effective, to tickle up a sore, kept open for the purpose, with a little bit of stick, while comfortably seated on the creature's back. The fellow we refer to did that. We do not say or think that all Arabs are cruel; very far from it, but we hold that, as a race, they are so. Their great prophet taught them cruelty by example and precept, and the records of history, as well as of the African slave-trade, bear witness to the fact that their "tender mercies" are not and never have been conspicuous! At first, as we have shown, indignities told pretty severely on the unfortunate Englishmen. But, as time went on, and they were taken further and further into the interior, and heavy burdens were daily bound on their shoulders, and the lash was frequently applied to urge them on, the keen sense of insult which had at first stirred them into wild anger became blunted, and at last they reached that condition of partial apathy which renders men almost indifferent to everything save rest and food. Even the submissive Stevenson was growing callous. In short, that process had begun which usually ends in making men either brutes or martyrs. As before, we must remark that Jack Molloy was to some extent an exception. It did seem as if nothing but death itself could subdue that remarkable man. His huge frame was so powerful that he seemed to be capable of sustaining any weight his tyrants chose to put upon him. And the influence of hope was so strong within him that it raised him almost entirely above the region of despondency. This was fortunate for his comrades in misfortune, for it served to keep up their less vigorous spirits.