men.

CHAPTER FOUR.

INTRODUCES THE READER TO THE PIRATE CITY, AND TO A FEW OF ITS
PECULIARITIES AND PRACTICES.

Permit us now, good reader, to introduce you to the top of a house in
Algiers. The roofs of the houses in the Pirate City are flat--a most
admirable Eastern peculiarity which cannot be too strongly recommended
to Western builders. They are, therefore, available as pleasant
"terraces," on which you may rise above your cares, to lounge, and
smoke--if afflicted with the latter mania--and sip coffee with your
wife, (wives, if you be a Turk), or romp with your children--if not too
dignified--or cultivate flowers, or read in a state of elevated
serenity, or admire the magnificent view of the blue bay, backed by the
bluer Jurjura mountains, with the snow-topped range of the Lesser Atlas
beyond. How much wiser thus to utilise one's house-top than to yield it
up, rent-free, to cats and sparrows!

Achmet Pasha, the Dey of Algiers at this time, or rather the
pirate-king, had a thorough appreciation of the roof of his palace, and
spent many hours daily on it, in consultation with his ministers, or in
converse with his wives.

As deys went, Achmet was a comparatively respectable man. He thought no
more of cutting off a human head than of docking a rat's tail; but then
he did not take a particular pleasure in this employment, and was not
naturally cruel, which is more than could be said of many of his
predecessors. He was also said to be a kind husband and a fond father,
but as no one, save the wives and children in question, knew anything of
the inner and private life of the palace, this must for ever remain a
matter of uncertainty. There was no doubt, however, that he was a tall,
handsome, dignified man, in the prime of life, with a stern eye and a
pleasant expression of mouth; that, in character, he was bold and
resolute; and that, in his jewelled turban, gold-incrusted vestments,
and flowing Eastern robes, he looked resplendent.

Courage and resolution were, indeed, qualities without which a Dey of
Algiers could scarcely come into existence, because his high position,
not being hereditary, was naturally the ambitious goal of all the bold
spirits in the Turkish army of janissaries which held the city, with its
mixed Arab population, in subjection. The most common mode of a change
of government was the strangulation of the reigning Dey by the man who
had power and party influence sufficient to enable hi