t, and they clanked their chains if so be they might be
heard, but none answered. At last their condition came to the ears of
the French consul, who threatened like penalties to Turkish prisoners
in Malta unless the knights were removed; and the Dey, on this,
lightened their chains by half, and put them in a better room. There
these unhappy gentlemen remained for eight long years more, save only
at the great festivals of the Church, when they were set free to join
in the religious rites at the French consulate; and once they formed a
strange and sad feature in the wedding festivities of the consul, when
they assumed their perukes and court-dresses for the nonce, only to
exchange them again for the badge of servitude when the joyful moment
of liberty was over. Their treatment grew worse as time wore on; they
were made even to drag trucks of stone, these knights of an heroic
Order; and hopeless of obtaining so large a sum as nearly $40,000,
which was demanded for their ransom, they managed to file their chains
and escape to the shore. But there, to their dismay, the ship they
expected was not to be seen, and they took refuge with a _marabut_ or
saint. Much to his credit, this worthy Moslem used his vast spiritual
influence for their protection, and the Dey spared their lives. At
last, by the joint efforts of their friends and the Redemptionists,
these poor gentlemen were ransomed and restored to their own
country.[72]

Among those who endured captivity in Algiers was one whom genius has
placed among the greatest men of all time. In 1575, Cervantes[73] was
returning from Naples--after serving for six years in the regiment of
Figueroa, and losing the use of his left arm at Lepanto--to revisit
his own country; when his ship _El Sol_ was attacked by several
Corsair galleys commanded by Arnaut Memi; and, after a desperate
resistance, in which Cervantes took a prominent part, was forced to
strike her colours. Cervantes thus became the captive of a renegade
Greek, one Deli Memi, a Corsair reis, who, finding upon him letters of
recommendation from persons of the highest consequence, Don John of
Austria among them, concluded that he was a prisoner of rank, for whom
a heavy ransom might be asked. Accordingly the future author of _Don
Quixote_ was loaded with chains and harshly treated, to make him the
more anxious to be ransomed. The ransom, however, was slow in coming,
and meanwhile the captive made several daring, ingenious, but