Page:A Set of Rogues.djvu/131

 were presently hoisted aboard without mishap. Then the captain of the Talbot and his officers gathering about us were mighty curious to know our story, and Don Sanchez very briefly told how we had gone in the Red Rose of Bristol to redeem two ladies from slavery; how we had found but one of these ladies living (at this Moll buries her face in her hands as if stricken with grief); how, on the eve of our departure, some of our crew in a drunken frolic had drowned a Turk of Alger, for which we were condemned by their court to pay an indemnity far and away beyond our means; how they then made this a pretext to seize our things, though we were properly furnished with the Duke's pass, and hold our men in bond; and how having plundered us of all we had, and seeing there was no more to be got, they did offer us our freedom for a written quittance of all they had taken for their justification if ever they should be brought to court; and finally, how, accepting of these conditions, we were shipped aboard their galley with nothing in the world but a few trifles, begged by Mistress Judith in remembrance of her mother.

This story was accepted without any demur; nay, Captain Ballcock, being one of those men who must ever appear to know all things, supported it in many doubtful particulars, saying that he remembered the Rose of Bristol quite well; that he himself had seen a whole ship's crew sold into slavery for no greater offence than breaking a mosque window; that the Duke's pass counted for nothing with these Turks; that he knew the galley we were brought in as well as he knew Paul's Church, having chased it a dozen times, yet never got within gunshot for her swift sailing, etc., which did much content us to hear.