My captor, the Moorish officer, was a native of Ghadames, an interior city of Tripoli—a caravan center located on a camel route to the Soudan. I was regarded by him as the spoils of war, and his purpose was clearly to sell me for a good price in an inland slave market where there would be no American consul to make inquiries. As soon as Derne was occupied, Joseph's army disbanded and the soldiers whose property I was began to journey to their homes. Our caravan started too, and I found myself riding upon the most uncomfortable camel in the outfit, chained by one wrist to the trappings of the beast.

I decided to lose no chance to escape. I knew that the farther inland I went, the more difficult it would be for me to reach the coast. My thoughts dwelt upon the treasure-bags I had last seen flopping through the streets of Derne on Mustapha's camels. I swore that my Arab comrade would see me again soon—and I devoutly hoped that his ingenuity would enable him to hide the treasure.

At last, when I was beginning to despair of falling in with a coastbound caravan, we met a huge one bound from the Soudan to Tripoli. In the excitement of meeting, and in the feasting and dancing that went on between the two parties, my guard forgot me. I had been unshackled while I ate, and the only sentinel over me was a young Arab who had been stationed at the front entrance to my tent. I saw him looking yearningly at the Arab girls who were dancing. I snored loudly and regularly, watching his movements through the opening. Suddenly he disappeared. A moment later I vanished too. I hoped to escape with the Tripoli-bound caravan, and stole over to where its camel-drivers were gathered. I had made my color as dark as possible, and wore my long gown in true Arab fashion. I had learned, too, some common Arab words.

In the center of the crowd I saw an African snake-charmer. The fakir's round, fleshy face shone like polished ebony, and when he grinned, which was often, I caught sight of two massive rows of gleaming ivory. He wore nothing but a breech-cloth and sandals. His body was covered with scars. These snake-charmers, I had heard, inflicted wounds upon themselves, sometimes through religious frenzy, and sometimes because it gave them prestige with their audiences.

This fakir influenced the people much in the same way that a street evangelist at home attracts listeners by music and loud words. In his train were several men who played cymbals and bagpipes. As soon as they began clanging and blowing upon these instruments, the crowd gathered.

I drew back, for fear that the fakir's attentions to me would lead to discovery, but his eyes had singled me out from the minute of my approach, and he followed me, though not in a way to attract notice.

Alarmed, I was about to make a wild dash into the desert when he caught my arm. I drew back to strike.

"The saint Mohammed," he said, catching my arm, "will harbor an escaping Nazarene so long as the Nazarene is willing to clang the cymbals loudly in the name of Mohammed, and is active in collecting coins when the snakes have done squirming and the tales have been told. Two of my attendants have deserted me. I offer you a trip to the coast in my train."

I nodded assent—any port in a storm!

"Bring forth the cymbals! Mohammed is welcome to any music I can make with them!" I said.

"Pay close attention to my motions and when I signal you, collect what coins you can. If any man question you, pretend to be dumb."

He led me into his tent close by, procured for me a coarse robe that was an effectual disguise and applied a pigment to my skin. When he was through with me I looked like one of his own tribe. I went forth then and mingled with the throng, listening while Mohammed told tales in Arabic.

Fascinating indeed were Mohammed's tricks. I watched in astonishment as he shaped a bundle of hay into a mound and covered the pile with water.

"By the grace of Mulai Ali, my patron saint," he said, "I give this hay to the flames and command these serpents to respect the commands of the Prophet's servant!"

With these words, he emptied a bag of snakes on the ground. They looked deadly as they wriggled about his feet and twined themselves around his body. I was told that their poison had not been removed, yet he held the head of the serpent that looked the most dangerous so close to him that its fangs almost touched his lips.

With feats of this nature, and with many tales, my new patron won his audience, and collections were easy to make. What I gathered pleased him and I had the feeling that I had for the time earned a right to his protection. I was safely housed in his tent when men came to search the oasis for me, but when they inquired of him he called down curses on them for causing the thought of a Nazarene to cross the mind of a child of the Prophet.

We departed with the caravan bound for the coast. The Moorish officer's soldiers inspected us closely, but Mohammed kept me closely engaged, and arranged my hood so that I was dimly seen by the watchers. I escaped even a challenge. We stopped at frequent oases, where Mohammed entertained and I collected.

But now, perhaps because the matter of my disguise handicapped him; perhaps because he feared punishment for harboring an escaped slave; perhaps from greed, Mohammed betrayed me. When we were a day's travel from Tripoli, we fell in with a small coast-bound caravan that had lost one of its camels and needed a beast of burden to take its place. I became that animal!

On hearing Achmet, the chief of the caravan, offer a large sum for a beast of burden, Mohammed's eyes lighted on me. "There," he said, "is a sound-bodied Nazarene slave that will do the work well. He has served my purpose and since I have saved him from being sold as a slave in the interior, he should not carp at my selling him to you. Take the Christian dog, and may you lead him to become a true follower of Mohammed!"

I was thus hurled into the ranks of Achmet, whose blood-shot, piercing eye and hawk nose gave him a cruel look in keeping with his character.

"The Christian dog belongs to no country," Mohammed told the people to whom I sought to appeal. "He is a cur who has been helping the troublesome Hamet Bashaw to stir up a rebellion against our noble ruler."

These words enraged the crowd against me, and seeing how hopeless was my state, I slunk away, kicked and slapped, to take up my burden.

Fortunately, this caravan too was bound for Tripoli. I expected that there I would have a chance to lay my case before the American consul, and hoped to secure through him freedom and permission to sail back to Derne in search of my treasure sacks.

Loaded with as much of the camel's pack as I could stagger under, I followed in the camel train. When camp was made, I was forced to scramble among the dogs for my share of the scraps thrown to them by the camel-drivers.

When we reached Tripoli I was driven, closely guarded, to dark quarters on the outskirts of the town, and threatened with death if I tried to escape. I found out that the American consul was at Malta on business that had arisen out of the making of peace with Joseph Bashaw. My case, therefore, seemed almost as hopeless as when I was first captured.

These cities of Barbary are strange affairs. The streets wind in and out between white walls. You go under shadowy arches; you climb here a dozen stairs and a little later go up an incline without stairs. The streets are usually too narrow for camels or carts, so that porters and donkeys do most of the hauling. A swarm of people pass continually up and down these cramped ways. The Moslem women wear silken street garments (haicks) that conceal the finery beneath. The faces of these women are covered with a fine silk veil, and underneath their haicks may be seen their bulging Turkish trousers.

When I asked why the women wore veils, I was told that the custom had come down from the time the Christian crusaders invaded the Moslem countries; the attention they paid to the wives and daughters of the Turks led to the followers of Mohammed prescribing the veil for their women folk.

Among the streams of people were Jews talking trade, consoling themselves for the insults by the Mohammedans with the thought of the profits they were making in their dealings with the Moslems; European envoys; rich, lazy Moors; camel drivers; black slaves; soldiers in the Bashaw's service, and sailors employed by the corsair captains. Lame, halt and blind beggars sat by the roadside, beseeching gifts.

"In the name of Allah, give us alms!" a beggar wailed from almost every corner and doorway. The men they solicited were usually rich Moors who wore turbans of fine cloth and richly embroidered vests. Yet often they would select for their target a camel driver from the desert, clad in his coarse gray baracan.

Here stood a fountain surrounded by Arabs and negroes drawing water in gourds and jugs; yonder a dozen women sat on the ground, selling bread. Hooded Arab boys romped on the outskirts of the throng, or recited verses from the Koran to a bearded teacher. Lean cats and dogs were everywhere. All kinds of smells filled the air—garlic, burning aloe wood, fish.

I stood one day in an archway six feet wide that stood in the center of four streets and watched the crowd go by. I saw fish-mongers carrying great baskets of sardines, and strings of slimy catfish, against which the crowd brushed, leaving the dirt and smell of the fish on their garments. Girls with boards on their heads filled with dough ready for baking darted in and out among the throng; donkeys, laden with garbage, ambled alongside of donkeys carrying fresh roses. Jews, burdened with muslin and calico, went from door to door, haggling with those who examined their wares through partly-opened doors. Boys sauntered along munching raw carrots and artichokes; girls of eight carried on their backs babies wrapped in dirty rags. The little mothers and their charges seemed never to have seen soap and water, but from hair to anklets they were decked with faded flowers.

Blind people—there were hundreds of them—walked along as boldly as if they had eyesight, leaving it for those who could see to get out of their way.

"Balek (out of the way)!" was the cry of everyone. "Emshi Rooah, ya kelb (clear out, begone, you dog)!" was a cry I had grown accustomed to through hearing it hurled at me countless times, for was not I a member of

The upper stories of the houses projected over the lower, and, because of the narrow street, the houses that stood opposite each other almost met, so that all one could see of the sky in many places was a bright blue chink overhead. The walls were all whitewashed; here and there a beautiful gateway appeared. One could not tell from the exterior of the houses whether rich folk or poor folk dwelt inside the walls, yet beyond many of these dark corridors leading through the walls were beautiful garden courts, with silver fountains playing and an abundance of flowers and trees, while underfoot were tiles of various rich colors.

Of the many mosques I passed I can tell nothing, as Christians are not allowed to enter them. Neither were we allowed to dress in green or white—for these are the colors of the prophet.

My new master, still using me as a beast of burden, took me several times to the house at which he lodged. I was thus able to get a glimpse inside a Mohammedan home of the middle class. We went through a whitewashed tunnel till we came to a gate from which hung a huge brass knocker.

My master did not use the knocker. He began to pound on the door in the Arab fashion. A veiled woman peeped over the terrace wall and screamed a question at him. His reply reassured her, and we were admitted to a little square court that was neatly paved with red tiles, through which ran a path of marble lined with oleanders and fig trees. Rooms, white-washed and blue-washed, opened on this court. The owner of the house, Fatima, was a widow, who lived with her old father, and earned her living by embroidering and weaving. She wore the white silken veil as we entered; but as she gossiped with my master she pulled it aside and showed her brown, dumpling face. She wore an embroidered jacket and silk pantaloons, along with gold trimmings and jewelry—an array that seemed so strange to me that I kept my eyes fastened on the ceiling while I was in her presence. She had rented one of her small rooms to my master, whose parents she knew. Fatima spent much of her time on the roof of her house, looking down on the street over the walls of her terrace. The roofs or terraces were used by women alone and most of the visiting between houses was done by climbing across the walls dividing the houses.

For privacy, Fatima dropped a flimsy curtain over the door of her room, and this barrier was as strictly respected by her household as if it were a strong door. Visitors were received in the parlor. Fatima and her guests sat on a divan covered with cushions and drank coffee. Handwoven carpets and draperies were everywhere.

The beds of the household were mattresses spread on the floor. One blanket often covers an entire family in the houses of the poor. Fatima fell sick while we were under her roof, and sent a woman friend to a holy man for a remedy. I discovered that the medicine was nothing more than a slip of paper containing the words "He will heal the breasts of the people who believe."

Fatima was ordered to chew and swallow the paper. The widow still complained of illness after swallowing this dose, and was ordered by the marabout to write a verse from the Koran on the inside of a cup; then to pour in water till the writing was washed away; then to drink this water, which was supposed to have in it the virtue expressed in the verse. I followed my master out of Fatima's house greatly amazed at this kind of medical treatment, but I did not wonder at hearing that she had complained that her aches were increasing.

THE SLAVE MARKET

Achmet had now no further use for me and decided to sell me as a slave. I was driven, chained, to the slave market. This auction place was in a large square. All around it were little booths. These were crowded with spectators. Through the center of the bazaar ran a walk. Most of the slaves that had been brought to the market for sale were women and girls. Among the Moors it was thought no evil to deal in human flesh. A black woman with children was first sold. One could tell by the way she clung to her brood that she feared she would be separated from them. We saw her face light when one of the Moors who was squatting on the edge of the walk bought the entire family.

A boy came next. He was handled by prospective buyers as if he were a horse. His eyes, mouth, teeth and nostrils were examined. The first Moslem who inspected him must have seen some defect in the lad, for he waved him away. The auctioneer then seized the boy and led him up and down the walk before the Moors in the bazaars, shouting his good points.

Most of the girls were blacks or mulattoes, brought from the interior of Africa by Arabian traders. There were a few white girls among them. Each girl or woman was handled in the same manner as the boys had been. Some of the maidens boldly returned the stare of those who inspected them. Others shrank from their inspection and, when possible, covered their faces with the woolen haicks they wore.

This slave market reflected only a small part of the slave life of the city. I saw men and women of all classes huddled together in dark, dirty prisons, praying their countrymen would send money to ransom them.

Those whose relatives were not rich enough to buy their freedom were sold to various buyers and set to work at all kinds of labor. The owners often made use of their slaves to earn them money. The old slaves were usually sent out to sell water. Many a drink have I bought from these water-carriers, as, dragging their chains, they led their donkeys through the streets and sold water from bags of skin that hung across the backs of their beasts. Some of my other acquaintances among the slaves acted as messengers or house-servants; others were employed as herders, drivers or plowmen—I have even seen a Christian slave yoked to a plow with an ox for a yoke-fellow.

Once, while inland, I saw coming out of the Soudan a score of slaves fastened together in a long wooden yoke that had many holes cut in it a few feet apart to admit the heads of the slaves. If one of these slaves fell sick or grew too weak to walk, he would hang from this yoke by his neck, with his feet dragging. As much as he suffered himself, his condition added to the sufferings of his yoke-fellows, for they had to bear his weight. I heard that if he seemed likely to die before the slave market was reached, his master would cut his head from his body with one knife stroke—it saved halting the procession to remove the sick man from the yoke.