Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/35

 Rh joined Manuel Ponce de Leon's company of Lope de Figneroa's regiment, in which, it seems probable, his brother Rodrigo was serving, and shared in the operations of the next three years, including the capture of the Goletta and Tunis. Taking advantage of the lull which followed the recapture of these places by the Turks, he obtained leave to return to Spain, and sailed from Naples in September 1575 on board the Sun galley, in company with his brother Rodrigo, Pedro Carillo de Quesada, late Governor of the Goletta, and some others, and furnished with letters from Don John of Austria and the Duke of Sesa, the Viceroy of Sicily, recommending him to the King for the command of a company, on account of his services; a dono infelice as events proved. On the 26th they fell in with a squadron of Algerine galleys, and after a stout resistance were overpowered and carried into Algiers.

It is not easy to resist the temptation to linger over the story of Cervantes' captivity in Algiers, for in truth a more wonderful story has seldom been told. Alexandre Dumas could hardly have invented so marvellous a series of adventures, and certainly would have hesitated before he asked even romance readers to accept anything so improbable. Nevertheless, incredible as the tale may seem, there is evidence for every particular that scepticism itself will not venture to call in question. At the distribution of the captives, Cervantes fell to the share of one Ali or Dali Mami, the rais or captain of one of the galleys, and a renegade, as were almost all embarked in the trade; for a trade the capture of Christians had now become, as Cervantes implies in the title of the "Trato de Argel." The Turks, to supply the demand for rowers, dockyard laborers, and the like, for their great Mediterranean fleet, had long been in the habit of kidnapping, either by making descents upon the coasts, or seizing the crews of vessels at sea. Moved by the sufferings of the unhappy victims, noble-minded men of various religious orders in Spain devoted themselves to the work of negotiating the release of as many as it was possible to ransom, acting as intermediaries between the captors and the friends of the captives, making up the sums required out of the funds contributed by the charitable, and even, as Cervantes himself says in the "Trato de Argel" and the novel of the "Española Inglesa," surrendering themselves as hostages when the money was not immediately forthcoming. It seems strange that a proud and powerful nation