“Not so quick with your ‘dogs,’” said Puddicombe, quietly. “You may find yourself doin’ it some day—under the bastinado.” Something in the old man’s voice made the boy wonder if he were not speaking from experience, if he had not at some time, in the throes of torture, given a friend away. On the second day they were taken to the market and auctioned. Before the sale took place the Basha picked out a fifth of the entire number, including all the best men, and ordered them to be marched away as the Sultan’s perquisites. Ortho was one of those chosen in the first place, but a venerable Moor in a sky-blue jellab came to the rescue, bowing before the Governor, talking rapidly and pointing to Ortho the while. The great man nodded, picked a Dutchman in his place and passed on. The public auction then began, with much preliminary shouting and drumming. Prisoners were dragged out and minutely inspected by prospective buyers, had their chests thumped, muscles pinched, teeth inspected, were trotted up and down to expose their action, exactly like dumb beasts at a fair. The simile does not apply to Mr. Puddicombe. He was not dumb; he lifted up his voice and shouted some rigmarole in Arabic. Ortho asked him what he was saying. “Tellin’ ’em what I can do, bless you! Think I want to be bought by a poor man and moil in the fields? No, I’m going to a house where they have cous-cous every day—y’understan’? See what I mean?” “Ahoy there, lords!” he bawled. “Behold me! Nine years was I in Algiers at the house of Abd-el-Hamri, the lawyer in Sidi Okbar Street. No _Nesrani_ dog am I, but a Moslem, a True Believer. Moreover, I am skilled in sewing and carpentry and many kindred arts. Question me, lords, that ye may see I speak the truth. Ahoy there, behold me!” His outcry brought the buyers flocking. The auctioneer, seeing his opportunity, enlarged on Mr. Puddicombe’s supposed merits. Positively the most accomplished slave Algiers had ever seen, diligent, gifted and of celebrated piety. Not as young as he had been perhaps, but what of it? What was age but maturity, the ripeness of wisdom, the fruit of experience? Here was no gad-about boy to be forever sighing after the slave wenches, loitering beside the story-tellers and forgetting his duty, but a man of sound sense whose sole interests would be those of his master. What offers for this union of all the virtues, this household treasure? Stimulated by the dual advertisement, the bidding became brisk, the clamor deafening, and Mr. Puddicombe was knocked down, body and soul for seventeen pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence (fifty-three ducats) to a little hunch-back with ophthalmia, but of extreme richness of apparel.