This week we conclude the story of the Knight de Cherf, another in the series of posts on life in Algiers drawn from Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda (The Relation of the Captivity and Liberation of Emanuel d’Aranda).
Since the Knight de Cherf had resolved to return to his home by the way of Spain, he took ship with us and the other Christian slaves for the town of Tetuán [depicted in the illustration at the top of this post]. Once there, we were all put into a Masmora (an underground prison) until the money for our ransoms should arrived. The Knight, however, being informed about that custom, had caused it to be inserted into the agreement he had with Alli Pegelin that he should not be put in there.
Elsewhere in this book, I have given an account of the three tempests we weathered, the design we had to kill the Turks and become masters of the ship, how we got to Tetuán after being shipwrecked, and how we went thence to Ceuta, leaving the Knight behind us at Tetuán, expecting the arrival of his ransom money from Livorno to Cadiz, and thence to Ceuta.
While he was waiting, the Knight bethought himself of some means to get off without paying his ransom. Accordingly, he visited various places about the city, flattering himself with hopes of making an escape. Such a thing could not be done, however, without assistance, so it was necessary that he should have the help of those of Ceuta.
He found a way to correspond by letter with a Captain of the Garrison of Ceuta (a city in Africa under the jurisdiction of the King of Spain), with whom he had been a slave in Algiers. He carefully sent his letters by the Casillas (which consists of Merchants travelling every week from Ceuta to Tetuán and back, with the permission of the two Governors) and agreed with that Captain to make him a present of 1,000 patacoons if some seamen would come with a boat to a certain place within 2,600 paces of Tetuán and there take off the Knight and three of his companions, who also had ransom agreements with Alli Pegelin upon the same terms as the said Knight de Cherf, and who had been lodging with him in a remote quarter of the city awaiting the arrival of their own ransom money. These men were part of this scheme and contributed towards the cost.
The time appointed for the execution of this plan was the 25th of July, in the year 1643. At midnight, the Knight prepared for each of them two or three pieces of cane, slotted one within the other like fishing rods, to be taken apart and hidden under their clothes, so that once assembled, and a knife fastened at the end, they might be taken for pikes. They managed to get about a quarter of a league out of Tetuán without any trouble and took up their position in a dry ditch fenced in on both sides with reeds and thorns, waiting until night for the completion of their enterprise.
Having waited long enough in the ditch, the Knight thought it time for them to go towards the shoreline. But one of his three companions, named Hans Maurus, a person accounted well experienced in sea matters, maintained that it was not late enough, adding that if they were obliged to tarry on the beach, they would risk the danger of being discovered and of being subsequently treated with the Falaca—putting the Knight uncomfortably in mind of his chastisement at Algiers.
This apprehension of a beating gave them pause, but after a little while, they went forwards, fitting their pieces of cane one into the other, with a knife at the end, making a kind of half-pike with which to defend themselves against the Alarbes [the indigenous inhabitants], who live by robbing, and who in the summertime lie in ambush in the fields.
As they went along, the Knight took a cross out of his pocket, that of the Order of Saint James, which he had saved when he was made a slave, and presented it to be kissed by his companions, saying that he was in hopes that Jesus would grant them their liberty, and that they should have for their intercessor the Apostle Saint James, whose feast it then was. But Hans Maurus, being a Lutheran, refused to do it.
Arriving at the shore, they saw a boat hard by, out of which someone called, “Ho, ho, for Tetuán,” revealing it to be the boat sent to receive them. Hans Maurus, notwithstanding all his experience and skill in sea matters, was seized by panic and said to his companions, “Lie down on the ground. These are fishermen of Tetuán. We shall be taken and beaten!”
In the meantime, the boat had crossed two or three times by the place appointed and those aboard it reiterated the aforesaid cry, striking on a steel, the signal agreed upon between them, upon which those ashore were to answer with the like noise.
Those in the boat, seeing nobody appear, and considering that it was within an hour of day, and also that the watch on the coast of Tetuán had perceived them and given the signal to the city by lighting a fire, resolved to be gone. At the going away of the boat, the Knight and those with him began to strike the steel and to call out, but all to no purpose and too late. Realizing that their design was discovered, they made their retreat without any noise towards Tetuán, getting into the city through one of the gates. Once inside, they heard that there had been an alarm in the city, and that a party of horsemen had been sent out into the country because of a signal fire which had been lit by the watch on the seashore.
This body of horsemen consisted of citizens, who, to enjoy some privileges and the title of imaginary soldiers, obliged themselves upon any alarm to ride out into the country and engage any enemy they might meet with. All this had passed, yet those of Tetuán knew nothing of the occasion of it, nor did they enquire much after it, for alarms are very frequent there, by reason they are so near neighbors to the city of Ceuta.
The Knight and those with him could not forbear quarrelling with Hans Maurus, who had occasioned the miscarriage of their design. He became so troubled, and so melancholy to think that, by his mistake, he and his companions had missed so fair an opportunity of recovering their liberty that he fell sick. Despite everything, his companions assisted him all they could and concerned themselves as much as might be in the recovery of his health. However, perceiving that he grew every day worse and worse, and that whatsoever medicines were administered to him did little good, they bethought themselves of the welfare of his soul.
To that end, the Knight, who knew that Hans Maurus had led a morally good life, and that he feared God, made it his business to exhort him to renounce Lutheranism and to embrace the Roman Catholic religion, discoursing with him concerning the difference of those persuasion, as he had done several times before. Hans Maurus being a person not much acquainted with letters, insisted that, being born in Norway, he had followed the Lutheran religion without any enquiry into the Roman Catholic, that Lutheranism had been followed by his ancestors, and that it would be impious for him to believe them dammed for that.
Hans Maurus, however, had often said, while he was in good health, that he would do better if he knew what were better, and that since it now behooved him to think seriously of his conscience, and since he was now entreated by his friends, whom he knew to be real and sincere, to consider seriously of it, he desired that a priest might come to him to give him satisfaction in some doubts.
The Knight immediately sent for a Dominican, a Spaniard, and a slave, who satisfied the doubts of Hans Maurus and undeceived him, so that he became a Roman Catholic, made his confession, and communicated with great fervency, all to the great satisfaction of the Catholic slaves who were present.
The second day after his conversion, he died.
And so, by a strange accident, Hans Maurus was deprived of his experience and skill on Saint James’s day and so lost his corporal liberty but gained the incomparable liberty of enjoying the sight of God.
Eight days after Maurus’s death, the Knight paid his ransom and went to Ceuta, and from thence by the way of Gibraltar to Madrid, where, having received rewards from his Catholic Majesty, he went onwards to the Low Countries, having suffered greater miseries then any of us, though we had been made slaves at the same time.
And he who shall attentively consider all our Knight did, will find that humane prudence is subject to strange oversight, and that God only is the disposer and director of all human actions.
For those who may be interested…
This spart of the Knight de Cherf’s tale can be found in “Relation Thirty-Eight: The Adventures of Philip de Cherf of Vlamertingue [a village in West Flanders], Knight of the Order of Saint James,” in the seventeenth century English translation of d’Aranda’s Relation, titled The history of Algiers and it’s slavery with many remarkable particularities of Africk / written by the Sieur Emanuel D’Aranda, sometime a slave there; English’d by John Davies, pp. 221-227.
As usual, I have edited the original seventeenth century text to make it more easily readable.
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