His optimism was to be put to the proof. On September 26, 1575, the _Sol_, with Cervantes and his brother Rodrigo on board, was separated from the rest of the Spanish squadron in the neighbourhood of Les Saintes Maries near Marseilles, and was captured by Moorish pirates. The desperate resistance of the Spaniards was unavailing; they were overcome by superior numbers and were carried off to Algiers. What follows would seem extravagant in a romance of adventures, but the details are supported by irrefragable evidence. As Algiers was at this time the centre of the slave-trade, the prisoners cannot have felt much doubt as to what was in store for them. Cervantes’s first owner was a certain Dali Mami, a Greek renegade, and captain of a galley. He read the recommendatory letters from Don John of Austria and the Duke of Sessa, and (not unnaturally) jumped at the conclusion that he had drawn a prize: his slave might not be of great use so far as manual labour was concerned, but any one who was personally acquainted with two such personages as Don John and the Duke must presumably be a man of consequence, and would assuredly be worth a heavy ransom. The first result of this fictitious importance was that Cervantes was put in irons, and chains; and, when these were at last removed, he was carefully watched. Cervantes found means to baffle his sentries. His first attempt to escape was made in 1576: it was an ignominious failure. He and his fellow-prisoners set out on foot to walk to Orán, the nearest Spanish outpost; their Moorish guide played them false, and there was nothing for it but to go back to Algiers. In 1577 Rodrigo de Cervantes was ransomed—he was reckoned cheaper than his brother—and he undertook to send a vessel to carry off Miguel and his friends. Meanwhile Cervantes enlisted the sympathies of a Spanish renegade, a gardener from Navarre named Juan; between them they dug out a cave in a garden near the sea, and smuggled into it one by one fourteen Christian slaves who were secretly fed during several months with the help of another renegade from Melilla, a scoundrel known as _El Dorador_. It is easier to say that the scheme was a bad one than to suggest anything better: it was within an ace of succeeding. The vessel sent by Rodrigo de Cervantes drew near the shore on September 28, and was on the point of embarking those hidden in the cave when a Moorish fishing-boat passed by and scared the crew, who stood out to sea again. A second attempt at a rescue was made, but it was too late. The plot had been revealed by _El Dorador_ to Hassan Pasha, the Dey of Algiers, and, when some of the crew landed to convey the fugitives on board, the garden was surrounded by Hassan’s troops. The entire band of Christians was captured, and Cervantes at once avowed himself the sole organiser of the conspiracy. Brought bound before Hassan, he adhered to his statement that his comrades were innocent, and that he took the entire responsibility for the plot.