emselves to carts like oxen, and lift huge stones and hods of
mortar with little more than a ragged shirt and trousers to cover them
from the furnace-heat of day or the dews of night. Men who carry
umbrellas and wear puggeries now-a-days on the Boulevard de la
Republique of Algiers have but a faint conception of what some of their
forefathers endured down at the "Marina" not much more than fifty years
ago, and of what they themselves could endure, perhaps, if fairly tried!
It must not be supposed, however, that all the slaves stood the trial
equally well. Some were old, others were young; some were feeble,
others strong; all were more or less worn--some terribly so.

Yonder old man carrying the block of stone which might tax the energies
of a stout youth, and to whom a taskmaster has just administered a cut
with the driving-whip, looks like one who has seen better days. Even in
his ragged shirt, broken-brimmed straw hat, and naked feet, he looks
like a gentleman. So he is; and there is a gentle lady and a stout son,
and two sweet daughters, in Naples, who are toiling almost as hard as he
does--if hours be allowed to count for pains--in order to make up his
ransom. The strong bull-necked man that follows him with a hod of
mortar is an unmistakable seaman of one of the Mediterranean ports. He
is a desperate character, and in other lands might be dangerous; but he
is safe enough here, for the bastinado is a terrible instrument of
torture, and the man is now not only desperate in wrath, but is
sometimes desperately frightened. His driver takes a fiendish pleasure
in giving him an extra cut of the whip, just to make him apparently a
willing horse, whether he will or not. The poor youth beside him is a
very different character. His training has been more gentle, and his
constitution less robust, for he has broken down under the cruel toil,
and is evidently in the last stages of consumption. The taskmaster does
not now interfere with him as he was wont to do when he first arrived.
He knows that the day is not far distant when neither the bastinado nor
any other species of torture will have power to force work out of him.
He also knows that overdriving will only shorten the days of his
usefulness; he therefore wisely lets him stagger by unmolested, with his
light load.

But why go on enumerating the sorrows of these slaves? Sidi Omar looked
at them with a careless glance, until he suddenly caught sight of
something