n ransom, for when it was discovered that I
was a captain, although I declared my scanty means and want of fortune,
nothing could dissuade them from including me among the gentlemen and
those waiting to be ransomed. They put a chain on me, more as a mark of
this than to keep me safe, and so I passed my life in that bano with
several other gentlemen and persons of quality marked out as held to
ransom; but though at times, or rather almost always, we suffered from
hunger and scanty clothing, nothing distressed us so much as hearing and
seeing at every turn the unexampled and unheard-of cruelties my master
inflicted upon the Christians. Every day he hanged a man, impaled one,
cut off the ears of another; and all with so little provocation, or so
entirely without any, that the Turks acknowledged he did it merely for
the sake of doing it, and because he was by nature murderously disposed
towards the whole human race. The only one that fared at all well with
him was a Spanish soldier, something de Saavedra by name, to whom he
never gave a blow himself, or ordered a blow to be given, or addressed a
hard word, although he had done things that will dwell in the memory of
the people there for many a year, and all to recover his liberty; and for
the least of the many things he did we all dreaded that he would be
impaled, and he himself was in fear of it more than once; and only that
time does not allow, I could tell you now something of what that soldier
did, that would interest and astonish you much more than the narration of
my own tale.

To go on with my story; the courtyard of our prison was overlooked by the
windows of the house belonging to a wealthy Moor of high position; and
these, as is usual in Moorish houses, were rather loopholes than windows,
and besides were covered with thick and close lattice-work. It so
happened, then, that as I was one day on the terrace of our prison with
three other comrades, trying, to pass away the time, how far we could
leap with our chains, we being alone, for all the other Christians had
gone out to work, I chanced to raise my eyes, and from one of these
little closed windows I saw a reed appear with a cloth attached to the
end of it, and it kept waving to and fro, and moving as if making signs
to us to come and take it. We watched it, and one of those who were with
me went and stood under the reed to see whether they would let it drop,
or what they would do, but as he did so the reed was r