Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/195

Rh elevated point on which he stood nearly the whole city lay spread out at his feet, its white terraces, domes, and minarets shining like silver in the pale light, and contrasting vividly with the dark blue bay lying between it and the distant range of the Jurjura mountains. Everything was profoundly calm, quiet, and peaceful, so that he found it difficult to believe in the fierce passions, black villany, horrible cruelty, and intolerable suffering which seethed below. For some time his eyes rested on the palace of the Dey, and he thought of his father and Lucien with deep anxiety.

Then they wandered to the hated Bagnio, and he thought with pity of the miserable victims confined there, and of the hundreds of other Christian men and women who toiled in hopeless slavery in and around the pirate city. Passing onward, his eyes rested on the lighthouse and fortifications of the port, and he wondered whether any of the powerful nations of the earth would ever have the common-sense to send a fleet to blow such a wasps' nest into unimaginable atoms!

At this point his thoughts were interrupted by the darkening of the moon by a thick cloud, and the sudden descent of deep shadow on the town—as if all hope in such a blessed consummation were forbidden.

Turning at once to the parapet of the terrace, he