Devonshire Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Devonshire Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Devon (England) -- Biography; Devon (England) -- History
After two or three months, Mustapha sent him to sea in a pirate vessel,
in which he was interested, to attend on the gunner. The expedition
was not very successful, as only one ship was taken, a Portuguese,
with a crew of eighteen who were enslaved. On his return to Algiers,
after having been a couple of months at sea, he was sold to a second
“Patroon,” named Ibrahim, who had “two Brothers in Algiers and a third
in Tunis. The middle Brother had designed to make a Voyage to Tunis
to see his Brother there; and it seems I was bought in order to be
given as a Present to him. I was then cloth’d very fine, that I might
be the better accepted. The Ship being ready we put to Sea, and in
about fourteen Days time we arrived at Tunis, and went forthwith to my
Patroon’s Brother’s House. The next Day my Patroon’s Brother’s Son,
taking a Pride to have a Christian to wait upon him, made me walk
after him. As I was attending upon my new Master through the Streets,
I met with a Gentleman habited like a Christian, not knowing him to
be an Englishman, as he was. He look’d earnestly upon me, and ask’d
me whether I were not an Englishman. I answered him, Yea! How came
you hither? said he. I told him I came with my Patroon. What, are you
a slave? said he. I replied, Yes. But he was loath to enter into any
further Discourse with me in the public Street, and therefore desired
of the young Man on whom I waited, that he would please to bring me to
his House. The young Man assured him he would; for being a drinker of
Wine, and knowing the Plenty of it in the said Gentleman’s House, he
was the rather willing to go. After the Gentleman was gone from us, my
young new Master told me, that he whom we talk’d to was the English
Consul.”
The Consul kindly invited Joseph Pitts to go to his house as often
as he had an opportunity. After spending thirty days in Tunis, Pitts
learned to his dismay that the “Patroon’s Brother” did not care to have
him, and that consequently he would have to return to Algiers. The
Consul and two merchants then endeavoured to buy Pitts, but his master
demanded for him five hundred dollars; they offered three hundred,
which was all that they could afford, and as Ibrahim refused to sell at
this price, the negotiation was broken off, and he returned with his
master to Algiers.
Here he was subjected to the persecution of his master’s youngest
brother, who endeavoured to induce Joseph to become a renegade. As
persuasion availed nothing, the young man went to his elder brother
Ibrahim, and told him that he had been a profligate and debauched man
in his time, as also a murderer; and that his only chance of Paradise
lay in making atonement for his iniquities by obtaining or enforcing
the conversion of his slave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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