Its occupants did not mind in the least; they splashed about, bubbling with laughter, baled the craft out and climbed in again. The ferry deposited its freight of captives on the spit to the north, where they were joined by the prisoners from the other ships, including some women taken on the Dutch Indiaman. They were then marched over the sand flats towards the town, and all the way the native women alternately shrieked for joy or cursed them. They lined the track up to the town, shapeless bundles of white drapery, and hurled sand and abuse. One old hag left her long nail marks down Ortho’s cheek, another lifted her veil for a second and sprayed him with spittle. “_Kafir-b-Illah was rasool!_” they screamed at the hated Christians. Then: “_Zahrit! Zahrit! Zahrit!_” would go the shrill joy cries. Small boys with shorn heads and pigtails gamboled alongside, poking them with canes and egging their curs on to bite them, and in front of the procession a naked black wild man of the mountains went leaping, shaking his long hair, whooping and banging a goat-skin tambourine. They passed under a big horseshoe arch and were within the walls. Ortho got an impression of huddled flat houses gleaming white under the moon; of men and women in flowing white; donkeys, camels, children, naked negroes and renegade seamen jostling together in clamorous alleys; of muskets popping, tom-toms thumping, pipes squeaking; of laughter, singing and screams, while in his nostrils two predominant scents struggled for mastery—dung and orange blossom. CHAPTER XX Ortho and his fellow prisoners spent the next thirty-nine hours in one of the town mattamores, a dungeon eighteen feet deep, its sole outlet a trap-door in the ceiling. It was damp and dark as a vault, littered with filth and crawling with every type of intimate pest. The omniscient Puddicombe told Ortho that such was the permanent lodging of Government slaves; they toiled all day on public works and were herded home at night to this sort of thing. More than ever was Ortho determined to forswear his religion at the first opportunity. He asked if there were any chances of escape from Morocco. Puddicombe replied that there were none. Every man’s hand was against one; besides, Sidi Mahomet I. had swept the last Portuguese garrison (Mazagan) off the coast six years previously, so where was one to run? He went on to describe some of the tortures inflicted on recaptured slaves—such as having limbs rotted off in quick-lime, being hung on hooks and sawn in half—and counseled Ortho most strongly, should any plan of escape present itself, not to divulge it to a soul. Nobody could be trusted. The slave gangs were sown thick with spies, and even those who were not employed as such turned informer in order to acquire merit with their masters. “Dogs!” cried Ortho, blazing at such treachery.