Don Quixote - Part I - Page 12/400

When Cervantes saw what had befallen them, he charged his companions to

lay all the blame upon him, and as they were being bound he declared

aloud that the whole plot was of his contriving, and that nobody else had

any share in it. Brought before the Dey, he said the same. He was

threatened with impalement and with torture; and as cutting off ears and

noses were playful freaks with the Algerines, it may be conceived what

their tortures were like; but nothing could make him swerve from his

original statement that he and he alone was responsible. The upshot was

that the unhappy gardener was hanged by his master, and the prisoners

taken possession of by the Dey, who, however, afterwards restored most of

them to their masters, but kept Cervantes, paying Dali Mami 500 crowns

for him. He felt, no doubt, that a man of such resource, energy, and

daring, was too dangerous a piece of property to be left in private

hands; and he had him heavily ironed and lodged in his own prison. If he

thought that by these means he could break the spirit or shake the

resolution of his prisoner, he was soon undeceived, for Cervantes

contrived before long to despatch a letter to the Governor of Oran,

entreating him to send him some one that could be trusted, to enable him

and three other gentlemen, fellow-captives of his, to make their escape;

intending evidently to renew his first attempt with a more trustworthy

guide. Unfortunately the Moor who carried the letter was stopped just

outside Oran, and the letter being found upon him, he was sent back to

Algiers, where by the order of the Dey he was promptly impaled as a

warning to others, while Cervantes was condemned to receive two thousand

blows of the stick, a number which most likely would have deprived the

world of "Don Quixote," had not some persons, who they were we know not,

interceded on his behalf.

After this he seems to have been kept in still closer confinement than

before, for nearly two years passed before he made another attempt. This

time his plan was to purchase, by the aid of a Spanish renegade and two

Valencian merchants resident in Algiers, an armed vessel in which he and

about sixty of the leading captives were to make their escape; but just

as they were about to put it into execution one Doctor Juan Blanco de

Paz, an ecclesiastic and a compatriot, informed the Dey of the plot.

Cervantes by force of character, by his self-devotion, by his untiring

energy and his exertions to lighten the lot of his companions in misery,

had endeared himself to all, and become the leading spirit in the captive

colony, and, incredible as it may seem, jealousy of his influence and the

esteem in which he was held, moved this man to compass his destruction by

a cruel death. The merchants finding that the Dey knew all, and fearing

that Cervantes under torture might make disclosures that would imperil

their own lives, tried to persuade him to slip away on board a vessel

that was on the point of sailing for Spain; but he told them they had

nothing to fear, for no tortures would make him compromise anybody, and

he went at once and gave himself up to the Dey.