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Updated: May 28, 2025
He fought as a common soldier on one of the Genoese galleys in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, distinguished himself there by his heroism, and was three times wounded, crippled in one arm for life. Later he was captured by Algerian pirates, and was for five years a slave, ever planning and attempting escapes, a daring, dashing hero, the life and admiration of his fellow-captives.
The Frenchman was not at home, but his wife, who was a squaw, had some discourse with my Indian friend, which I did not understand. We tarried there about two hours, then returned to the Indian village, where they gave me some victuals. Not long after I saw one of my fellow-captives who gave me a melancholy account of their sufferings after I left them.
Donnacona and all his fellow-captives, except only one little girl, had died in France. Cartier dared not tell the whole truth to the natives, and he contented himself with saying that Donnacona was dead, but that the other Indians had become great lords in France, had married there and did not wish to return.
It was still more difficult, now that a way was open to escape, to persuade his fellow-captives to remain in prison. Some priests would not take his advice, among them Monseigneur Surat, the vicar-general. He had secured a suit of citizen's clothes, and hoped to escape in safety. In vain the Abbé Lamazou called out to him, "To go is certain death; to stay is possible safety."
"Then go after him, and tell him, Hereward has the Abbot of Burgh, and half a dozen knights, safe by the heels. And unless Ivo clears the wood of his men by nightfall, I will hang every one of them up for the crows before morning." Ivo got the message, and having had enough fighting for the day, drew off, says the chronicler, for the sake of the Abbot and his fellow-captives.
For the most part they were uttered in a low tone, as the three midshipmen conversed seriously and earnestly together; but occasionally they became elevated to a higher pitch when Sailor Bill, guarded on the opposite side of the encampment, took part in the conversation, and louder speech was necessary to the interchange of thought between him and his fellow-captives.
The police and hygiene of the hospital were defective in the extreme; the attendants, who appeared in almost every instance to have been selected from the prisoners, seemed to have in many cases but little interest in the welfare of their fellow-captives.
The reasons why I excluded him from my portrait-gallery are so honorable to both of us, that I must ask permission briefly to record them. My fellow-captives soon discovered that I was studying their personal peculiarities for my own advantage and for the public amusement. Some thought the thing a good joke; some objected to it, and quarreled with me.
In a garden outside the city on the sea-shore, he constructed, with the help of the gardener, a Spaniard, a hiding-place, to which he brought, one by one, fourteen of his fellow-captives, keeping them there in secrecy for several months, and supplying them with food through a renegade known as El Dorador, "the Gilder."
The police and hygiene of the hospital were defective in the extreme; the attendants, who appeared in almost every instance to have been selected from the prisoners, seemed to have in many cases but little interest in the welfare of their fellow-captives.
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