(This post is a continuation of The Adventures of William Okeley: A Captive’s Tale – Parts 1 & 2. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read those posts before continuing on here.)
This week’s post continues William Okeley’s first-person account of his experiences as a slave in Algiers in the early seventeenth century.
The English tailor I met with counseled me to come and stay with him, and he would teach me to work at his trade. I very readily agreed with his notion and was suddenly elevated into huge hopes that I should now be in a capacity to answer my patron’s demands and escape his lash.
When I came to this man the next day, however, I perceived, by his silence, that his mind was changed. I was loath, either out of modesty or pride, to give him further trouble and therefore, interpreting his silence to be a civil way of denial, I left him and once more launched out into the wide world.
In this forlorn posture, I wandered, but neither knew·nor much cared whither, until, some days later, I came across another Englishman who was sitting in a little shop. He asked me, “What news?” I presently began the story of my desperate condition, how the rigid law of my patron had imposed two dollars per month upon me, and how I knew not where to acquire the least bit of it. He heard, considered, pitied my condition, and invited me to come and set up in the shop with him.
I saw nothing but bare walls, and so I asked him, “To what end? What trade should we make here? There’s small difference between starving in the streets and in a shop.”
“Countryman,” said he, “here I sell lead, iron, shot, strong waters, tobacco, and many other things.”
This notion of setting up in his shop was a great deal too good to be refused. I thus acquainted my patron with my design and pleaded that I wanted stock to set up with. He lent me a small modicum, and with another pittance that I had privately reserved of my own,·I began to trade. That very night, I went and bought a parcel of tobacco. The next morning, the Englishman and I dressed and cut it and fitted it for sale.
In this way, we prospered, dividing up our profits every week according to the proportion of our respective stocks. In a while, finding the world flocking to us, we ventured upon no less than a whole butt of wine, for we had some money as well as credit. This wine we sold, and got considerable profit by it.
But it is very difficult to maintain moderation in an exalted state. My partner, being elevated with our good success, grew a good fellow and a bad husbandman. He neglected his business, went tippling up and down the town, and the concerns of the shop and trade lay wholly upon my shoulders.
It fell out about this time that one John Randal, who with his wife and child were taken in the same ship with myself, being put to the same shift as myself, and, as is very common, having a monthly tax imposed upon him by his patron which he must scrape up where he could, besides maintain his wife and child, went up and down seeking for relief. At last the poor man straggled into our shop. His case made a great impression upon me, for I could not suffer a poor distressed countryman, a fellow-captive, to stand begging at that same door where I had so lately stood myself. I bade him therefore to come in, and, knowing him to be a glover by trade, advised him to learn to make canvass clothing for seamen who were slaves, which he readily did.
It would be tedious to trouble the reader with how I wore out three or four irksome years in this way of trading, and all this while there was no dawning of deliverance from our bondage. Our condition was bad, and in danger every day of being worse, as the mutable humors of our patrons determined. Our shop and trade was no freehold. In time, however, we grew so habituated to our bondage that we almost forgot liberty and grew stupid and senseless of our slavery.
I was, during this time, managing my trade very stoutly and successfully. John Randal was working with me in my shop, my original partner having gone and left all to me. One day, I changed a twenty shilling piece of gold for silver. When I had the money chinking in my hand, John Randal asked me what I would do with it. I desired him to keep it for me.
He not being very well, we agreed to walk out of the town to take the fresh air, a liberty which, for somewhat above a mile, is indulged to the slaves. When we had walked almost to the end of our limit, I was desirous to walk a little further, to view the coast to see any possible advantage that might offer itself afterwards for an escape, though we actually designed no such thing at the moment.
As we were prying about the seaside, one of the spies appointed to constantly keep watch lest any slaves should run away called to us and charged us with an attempt to make an escape. We flatly denied it, but he laid hold on us. There was no resisting, and obey we must. Accordingly, we went with him to the city. As we drew near some Englishmen, I beckoned to one whom I knew and, pretending only to whisper with him, I secretly conveyed to him my purse, wherein were seven pieces of eight.
We were presently met by another spy, and those two brought us to a little blind house, where they searched us. They took away the twenty shillings which I had put into my friend’s hand. Finding nothing upon me, they took away my doublet. They then brought us before the Vice Roy and his counsel. We were examined and strongly charged with an attempt to escape. We denied all and stood upon our innocence, affirming that our only design of walking abroad was to take the fresh air, occasioned by my fellow’s sickness.
This explanation was not accepted, and the battoon was commanded to be brought forth.
The way of punishment by the battoon is this. They have a strong staff, about six foot long, in the middle whereof are bored two holes. Into these holes a cord is put, and the ends of the cord fastened on the one side of the staff with knots, so that it makes a·loop on the other side. Into this this loop of the cord both the feet of the person condemned to this punishment are put. Then two burly fellows, one at each end of the staff, lift it up in their arms, twisting the staff about till the his feet are fast pinched with the cord by the ankles. They raise up his feet with his soles upward well nigh as high as their shoulders. In this posture, they hold him, the poor man the meanwhile resting only with his neck and shoulders on the ground. Then comes another lusty sturdy knave behind him, and with a tough short truncheon gives him as many violent blows on the soles of his feet as the counsel shall order.
To find out how events unfolded from here, go to The Adventures of William Okeley: A Captive’s Tale – Part 4.
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