mention my name to
Fargis. He will see you are all right till you can look round.
By-the-by, I hear the Earl's daughter that lives here is an heiress. Is
that so? Hullo! what's that?'

Both men sprang up at the noise, and crept cautiously forward to listen.
It had sounded like a stifled cry, and a splash, but so faint that in
the stillness which followed they thought themselves mistaken. Their
movement give Alan his chance.

(_Continued on page 142._)

[Illustration: "'Give me a leg up.'"]

[Illustration: "Concealment was impossible."]

STORIES FROM AFRICA.

V.--THE STORY OF A RETRIBUTION.

We have had two stories of cruel captivity among the Moors of North
Africa, and back in the fifteenth--even in the sixteenth--century, such
things seem easy to believe. The hard thing to realise is that, not a
hundred years ago, in days which our own grandparents might almost
remember, Christian captives were still toiling under the whips of their
Moorish taskmasters in the port of Algiers, with the prospect of torture
and death before them if they tried to escape and failed. But the cup of
Moorish cruelty and evil-doing was very nearly full, the day of
retribution was drawing near, and to England fell the honour of striking
the first blow.

It was in the spring of the year 1816, when the great cloud which had
overhung all Europe had been dispersed by the battle of Waterloo, that
the English Admiral, Lord Exmouth, appeared before the port of Algiers,
and, in the name of his nation, sent in a demand for the abolition of
Christian slavery and the cession of the Ionian Islands. The Turks have
always been skilful in putting off the day of submission, and the reply
was that the Dey must communicate with his lord, the Sultan of Turkey,
before he could make a definite answer. Those unpleasant visitors, the
English gunboats, were thus got rid of for three months; but,
unfortunately for him, the Dey had not learnt wisdom from the warning.
On the Ascension Day following, the crews of a Neapolitan fishing fleet
landed at Bona, on the north coast of Africa, to join in the festival
service. The pirates of Algiers swooped down upon the defenceless
fishermen, and massacred numbers of them on the spot without any
provocation. Then, as if to show that the act was one of open defiance,
they trampled on and insulted the British flag, and imprisoned the
English Vice-Consul.

The news set England aflame, the story of the Bona massacr