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Updated: June 14, 2025
On the seventeenth day of August, at eight in the evening, the Gibraltar frigate made a signal that fourteen sail appeared on the Barbary shore, to the eastward of Ceuta; upon which the English admiral immediately heaved up his anchors and went to sea.
A mile or so to eastward were dotted the huts and tents of a Bedouin encampment on the fertile emerald pasture-land that spread away, as far as eye could range, towards Ceuta. Nearer, astride of a grey rock an almost naked goatherd, a lithe brown stripling with a cord of camel-hair about his shaven head, intermittently made melancholy and unmelodious sounds upon a reed pipe.
By this time four other men had made their appearance from the upper part of the rock. "What do you want?" asked one of them, whom Servadac remembered to have seen before at Gibraltar. "Can I speak to your commanding officer?" Servadac inquired. "Which?" said the man. "The officer in command of Ceuta?" "Yes, if there is one."
He was obliged to comply, but, unable to look Duarte in the face, he retired to his own estates at the Algarve. Duarte convoked the States-general of the kingdom, to consider whether Ceuta should be yielded to purchase his brother's freedom.
King John, however, referred the matter to three persons on whom he placed great reliance in matters relating to cosmography and discovery; one of these was Don James Ortez, bishop of Ceuta who was a Spaniard, born at Calzadilla in the commandary of St Jago, and commonly called the Doctor Calzadilla; the other two were Roderick and Joseph, two Jewish physicians.
Still further on, dazzlingly white hamlets enlivened the Morocco shore, with deep green tropical verdure in the background, while Ceuta attracted more than ordinary interest. It is a Spanish penal colony, surrounded by jealous, warlike Moors, slave-traders and smugglers.
Being only about twelve miles distant from Gibraltar, the little garrison at Ceuta had felt itself by no means isolated in its position; but by frequent excursions across the frozen strait, and by the constant use of the telegraph, had kept up their communication with their fellow-countrymen on the other island.
At last Dom Fernando, the youngest of the brothers, a lad of fourteen, proposed that their knighthood should be earned by an expedition to take Ceuta from the Moors. A war with the infidel never came amiss, and was in fact regarded as a sacred duty; moreover, Ceuta was a nest of corsairs who infested the whole Mediterranean coast.
It crossed the Sahara, skirting the strongholds of the Senussia Brotherhood, penetrating the wastes patrolled by the Tuaregs, ferocious camel riders whose mouths were always muffled in black bandages. It went north to the steppes of the Ziban, from which the tribe of the Ouled Nail scattered their feather-crowned dancing girls from Ceuta to Suez.
Three years before the reduction of Ceuta, the Duke of Visco had sent a vessel in 1412 to explore the western coast of Africa, being the first voyage of discovery undertaken by the Portuguese, or by any other nation in modern times.
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