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They carried large numbers of armed men on board. Sometimes they scoured the Mediterranean, and protected French merchant-ships against the Sallee rovers. At other times they were engaged in the English channel, attacking Dutch and English ships, sometimes picking up a prize, at other times in actual sea-fight.
Stephen suggested that they should return to the coast, where they might be taken off by some passing vessel. "You forget that passing vessels are more likely to be enemies than friends," observed Roger. "We cannot be very far off from Sallee and those ports out of which the rovers sail.
And, in truth, the poor souls found it but too well served; for the Brig was captured off Bastia in Corsica by one of these diabolical Barbary Rovers, all on board made Slaves, and carried, not into Algiers, but into Sallee.
Many other similar gallant actions were fought with the Algerines and Sallee rovers, who, however, notwithstanding their frequent defeats, continued their depredations on the commerce of England and other European countries.
However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our ship being disabled, and three of our men killed and eight wounded, we were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a port belonging to the Moors.
He failed not, at the conclusion of each ditty, to favour Julian with some account of what he had sung, either in the way of translation, or historical anecdote, or as the lay was connected with some peculiar part of his own eventful history, in the course of which the poor little man had chanced to have been taken by a Sallee rover, and carried captive into Morocco.
This was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did not carry quite 100l. of my new-gained wealth, so that I had 200l. left, and which I lodged with my friend's widow, who was very just to me, yet I fell into terrible misfortunes in this voyage; and the first was this, viz. our ship making her course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between those islands and the African shore, was surprised in the grey of the morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the sail she could make.
But it was not infamous, nay, it was laudable, in the kinsmen and friends of a prisoner to contribute of their substance in order to make up a purse for Jeffreys. The Sallee rover, who threatened to bastinado a Christian captive to death unless a ransom was forthcoming, was an odious ruffian.
In the Benbow frigate he was attacked by a sallee rover, who boarded him, but was beaten off with the loss of thirteen men. When he landed at Cadiz, he brought them on shore in a sack, and on being challenged by the custom house officers as importing contraband goods, he threw them on the table with, "Gentlemen, if you like 'em, they are at your service."
He is now practically a prisoner, having been taken under an escort to Sallee and, at any moment, the whole of the British colony here may be seized, and thrown into prison; and if you know what Moorish prisons are, you would know that that would mean death to most of them certainly, I should say, to all the ladies." "But can they not leave, in neutral vessels?" "No.
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