king suspect that my ransom money had been
for a long time in Algiers, and that the merchant had for his own
advantage kept it secret. In fact my master was so difficult to deal with
that I dared not on any account pay down the money at once. The Thursday
before the Friday on which the fair Zoraida was to go to the garden she
gave us a thousand crowns more, and warned us of her departure, begging
me, if I were ransomed, to find out her father's garden at once, and by
all means to seek an opportunity of going there to see her. I answered in
a few words that I would do so, and that she must remember to commend us
to Lela Marien with all the prayers the captive had taught her. This
having been done, steps were taken to ransom our three comrades, so as to
enable them to quit the bano, and lest, seeing me ransomed and themselves
not, though the money was forthcoming, they should make a disturbance
about it and the devil should prompt them to do something that might
injure Zoraida; for though their position might be sufficient to relieve
me from this apprehension, nevertheless I was unwilling to run any risk
in the matter; and so I had them ransomed in the same way as I was,
handing over all the money to the merchant so that he might with safety
and confidence give security; without, however, confiding our arrangement
and secret to him, which might have been dangerous.

CHAPTER XLI.

IN WHICH THE CAPTIVE STILL CONTINUES HIS ADVENTURES

Before fifteen days were over our renegade had already purchased an
excellent vessel with room for more than thirty persons; and to make the
transaction safe and lend a colour to it, he thought it well to make, as
he did, a voyage to a place called Shershel, twenty leagues from Algiers
on the Oran side, where there is an extensive trade in dried figs. Two or
three times he made this voyage in company with the Tagarin already
mentioned. The Moors of Aragon are called Tagarins in Barbary, and those
of Granada Mudejars; but in the Kingdom of Fez they call the Mudejars
Elches, and they are the people the king chiefly employs in war. To
proceed: every time he passed with his vessel he anchored in a cove that
was not two crossbow shots from the garden where Zoraida was waiting; and
there the renegade, together with the two Moorish lads that rowed, used
purposely to station himself, either going through his prayers, or else
practising as a part what he meant to perform in earnest. And thus h