As a matter of fact, Cervantes was poor both in money and the means of borrowing it. His father, in the second year of his sons' captivity, managed to raise enough funds to secure the release of one of them, but Deli Memi, thinking Miguel of more importance than his brother, kept the future author and set free Rodrigo. Upon this, Cervantes planned to escape. In a cavern six miles from Algiers a number of fugitive slaves were hiding. Rodrigo promised to send a Spanish ship to take away these refugees. The captive Cervantes was to join them. The ship arrived but some Algerine fisherman gave the alarm and the vessel was obliged to put out to sea without the fugitives. The Dey of Algiers, learning of the hiding place from a treacherous comrade of Cervantes, sent soldiers to seize the escaped slaves. He was a murderous ruler. Cervantes later in "Don Quixote" gave the Dey eternal infamy by thus painting one of the characters in his colors: "Every day he hanged a slave; impaled one; cut off the ears of another; and this upon so little animus, or so entirely without cause, that the Turks would own he did it merely for the sake of doing it and because it was his nature." Cervantes took the blame for the entire project on himself. Threatened with torture and death, he held to his story. The ruler, amazed at his boldness, departed from his usual custom and purchased Cervantes from Deli Memi for five hundred crowns. Again and again the Spaniard tried to escape, always at the risk of being punished with death. At last, when his master was called to Constantinople, and was taking Cervantes with him in chains, a priest obtained his ransom for one hundred pounds, English money, and Cervantes was free to go home and enter upon the literary career that brought forth "Don Quixote." The nations of Europe by persistent effort could have wiped out piracy along the entire Barbary coast, but instead they continued to allow their shipping to be preyed upon, paid ransoms meekly, and sent bribes in the form of presents to the greedy and insolent rulers. France incited the pirates to prey upon the shipping of Spain; Great Britain and Holland urged the corsairs to destroy the sea commerce of France--each great power sought the pirates as an aid to bar their rivals from the trade of the Mediterranean. The consuls sent from Europe to these provinces were often seized as hostages by the pashas, deys and beys to whom they toadied, and if the fleets of their countries in a spasm of rage at some fresh indignity attacked the Barbary ports, the consuls were tortured. For instance, when the French shelled Algiers in 1683, the Vicar Apostolic Jean de Vacher, acting as consul, was blown to pieces from a cannon's mouth. DAUNTLESS MASTER NICHOLS