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While it might be true that she was in no immediate danger, and possibly could be safely ransomed if I once escaped to civilization, yet the risk of such venture and delay was too great; nor would my love abide so vast a sacrifice on her part. I thought to say this to her; but there was a look of firm decision in her sweet face, as her dark eyes met mine, that somehow held me silent.
With a shrewd Welsh head under his iron morion, and a stout Welsh heart under his tawny doublet, he had gained little but hard knocks and a dozen wounds in his campaigning, and had but recently been ransomed, rather grudgingly by his government, from a Spanish prison in Brabant.
Under these provisions, enumerated in full in a long contract, Duguay-Trouin received a force of six ships-of-the-line, seven frigates, and over two thousand troops, with which he sailed to Rio Janeiro in 1711; captured the place after a series of operations, and allowed it to be ransomed at the price of something under four hundred thousand dollars, probably nearly equal to a million in the present day, besides five hundred cases of sugar.
We at once gave the renegade five hundred crowns to buy the vessel, and with eight hundred I ransomed myself, giving the money to a Valencian merchant who happened to be in Algiers at the time, and who had me released on his word, pledging it that on the arrival of the first ship from Valencia he would pay my ransom; for if he had given the money at once it would have made the king suspect that my ransom money had been for a long time in Algiers, and that the merchant had for his own advantage kept it secret.
Hence when the Nandi have taken a prisoner they shave his head and keep the shorn hair as a surety that he will not attempt to escape; but when the captive is ransomed, they return his shorn hair with him to his own people. To preserve the cut hair and nails from injury and from the dangerous uses to which they may be put by sorcerers, it is necessary to deposit them in some safe place.
"I hear you take no ransom for your prisoners, but doom them all to death: I am a Roman, and with a Roman heart will suffer death. But there is one thing for which I would entreat." Then bringing Imogen before the king, he said, "This boy is a Briton born. Let him be ransomed. He is my page. Never master had a page so kind, so duteous, so diligent on all occasions, so true, so nurse-like.
They never took them away from their friends and country; they always ransomed them, if they had wherewithal to pay their way. So good-natured! upon my life it was a most excellent custom! They took any little valuables they found about them, and then put them up at auction.
Some months afterwards Simon Girty ransomed her and sent her and tried to follow the trail; but the crafty forest warriors had concealed it with such care that no effective pursuit could be made. Retaliation of the Settlers. In none of the above-mentioned raids did the Indians suffer any loss of life, and in none was there any successful pursuit.
One at least among the company of Englishmen was glad that the negotiations with the Powhatan had come to nothing, and that Pocahontas had not been ransomed. That was Master John Rolfe. For Pocahontas, although a savage, was beautiful and kind, and John Rolfe had fallen madly in love with her.
The redemption of the prisoners there might have seemed his first thought, but that he did so much in other quarters. At different times, with the alms that he collected, and out of the revenues of his benefices, he ransomed no less then twelve hundred slaves from their captivity.
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