His master (whom he designated as “Sore-Eyes”) was very amiable when not suffering from any of his manifold infirmities, amiable, not to say indulgent. He had shares in every corsair in the port, fifteen cows and a large orchard. The slaves had cous-cous, fat mutton and chicken scrapings almost every day, butter galore and as much fruit as they could eat. He was teaching Sore-Eyes the King’s Game and getting into his good graces. But, purposely, not too deep. Did he make himself indispensable Sore-Eyes might refuse to part with him and he would not see Sidi Okbar Street again—a Jew merchant had promised to get his letter through. Between his present master and the notary there was little to choose, but Sallee was a mere rat-hole compared with Algiers. He enlarged on the city of his captivity, its white terraces climbing steeply from the blue harbor, its beauty, wealth and activity with all the tremulous passion of an exile pining for home. Many free renegades were there also about the town with whom Ortho was on terms of friendship—mutineers, murderers, ex-convicts, wanted criminals to a man. These gentry were almost entirely employed either as gunners and petty officers aboard the corsairs or as skilled laborers in the yards. They had their own grog-shops and resorts, and when they had money lived riotously and invited everybody to join. Many a night did Ortho spend in the renegado taverns when the rovers were in after a successful raid, watching them dicing for shares of plunder and dancing their clattering hornpipes; listening to their melancholy and boastful songs, to their wild tales of battle and disaster, sudden affluence and debauch; tales of superstition and fabulous adventure, of phantom ships, ghost islands, white whales, sea dragons, Jonahs and mermaids; of the pleasant pirate havens in the main, slave barracoons on the Guinea coast, orchid-poisoned forests in the Brazils, of Indian moguls who rode on jeweled elephants beneath fans of peacock feathers, and the ice barriers to the north, where the bergs stood mountain-high and glittered like green glass. Sometimes there were brawls when the long sheath knives came out and one or other of the combatants dropped, occasionally both. They were hauled outside by the heels and the fun went on again. But these little unpleasantnesses were exceptional. The “mala casta” ashore were the essence of good fellowship and of a royal liberality; they were especially generous to the Christian captives, far more kindly than the slaves were to each other. The habitual feeling of restraint, of suspicion, vanished before the boisterous conviviality of these rascals. When the fleets came, banging and cheering, home over the bar into the Bou Regreg and the “mala casta” were in town blowing their money in, the Europeans met together, spoke openly, drank, laughed and were friends. When they were gone the cloud descended once more, the slaves looked at each other slant-wise and walked apart.