Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/38

 xxviii After this he seems to have been kept in still closer confinement than before, for nearly two years passed before he made another attempt. This time his plan was to purchase, by the aid of a Spanish renegade and two Valencian merchants, resident in Algiers, an armed vessel in which he and about sixty of the leading captives were to make their escape; but just as they were about to put it into execution, one Doctor Juan Blanco de Paz, an ecclesiastic and a compatriot, informed the Dey of the plot. The Dorador, who had betrayed him on the former occasion, was a poor creature, influenced probably by fear of the consequences, but Blanco de Paz was a scoundrel of deeper dye. Cervantes by force of character, by his self-devotion, by his untiring energy and his exertions to lighten the lot of his companions in misery, had endeared himself to all, and become the leading spirit in the captive colony, and, incredible as it may seem, jealousy of his influence and the esteem in which he was held, moved this man to compass his destruction by a cruel death. The merchants, finding that the Dey knew all, and fearing that Cervantes under torture might make disclosures that would imperil their own lives, tried to persuade him to slip away on board a vessel that was on the point of sailing for Spain; but he told them they had nothing to fear, for no tortures would make him compromise anybody, and he went at once and gave himself up to the Dey.

As before, the Dey tried to force him to name his accomplices. Everything was made ready for his immediate execution; the halter was put round his neck and his hands tied behind him, but all that could be got from him was that he himself, with the help of four gentlemen who had since left Algiers, had arranged the whole, and that the sixty who were to accompany him were not to know anything of it until the last moment. Finding he could make nothing of him, the Dey sent him back to prison more heavily ironed than before. But bold as these projects were, they were surpassed in daring by a plot to bring about a revolt of all the Christians in Algiers, twenty or twenty-five thousand in number, overpower the Turks, and seize the city. Of the details of his plan we know nothing; all we know is that at least two of those in his confidence believed it would have been successful had it not been for the treachery of some persons in the secret; and certain it is that the Dey Hassan stood in awe of Cervantes, and