Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [209]
This was how I spent my life, locked in a prison or house that the Turks call a bagnio, where they hold Christian captives, those that belong to the king as well as some that belong to private individuals, and the ones they call ‘stockpiled,’ which is like saying ‘public prisoners,’ who serve the city in public works and in other employment for the general good; these captives find it very difficult to obtain their freedom, because they have no individual master, and there is no one with whom to negotiate their ransom even if a ransom is available. As I have said, some private individuals bring their captives to these bagnios, principally when they are ready to be ransomed, because there they can be kept, not working and in safety, until the ransom money arrives. The king’s captives who are about to be ransomed do not go out with the work crews, either, unless payment of their ransom is delayed, and then, to make them write more urgently for the money, they are obliged to work and are sent out with the others for wood, which is no easy labor. I was one of those waiting for ransom, for when they learned that I was a captain, though I told them of my limited possibilities and lack of wealth, they put me with the gentlemen and the people awaiting ransom. They put a chain on me, more as a sign that I was to be ransomed than to hold me, and I spent my days in that bagnio, with many other gentlemen and people of note who had been selected to be held for ransom. Although hunger and scant clothing troubled us at times, even most of the time, nothing troubled us as much as constantly hearing and seeing my master’s remarkably and exceptionally cruel treatment of Christians. Each day he hanged someone, impaled someone, cut off someone’s ears, and with so little provocation, or without any provocation at all, that the Turks knew he did it merely for the sake of doing it and because it was in his nature to murder the entire human race. The only one who held his own with him was a Spanish soldier named something de Saavedra,5 who did things that will be remembered by those people for many years, and all to gain his liberty, yet his master never beat him, or ordered anyone else to beat him, or said an unkind word to him; for the most minor of all the things he did we were afraid he would be impaled, and more than once he feared the same thing; if I had the time, I would tell you something of what that soldier did, which would entertain and amaze you much more than this recounting of my history.
In any case, overlooking the courtyard of our prison were the windows of the house of a wealthy and important Moor, and these, as is true in most Moorish houses, were more slits than windows, yet even these were covered with very heavy and tightly woven jalousies. One day I happened to be on a flat roof in our prison with three companions; we were passing the time by trying to see how far we could jump with our chains on, for we were alone, all the other Christians having gone out to work; by chance I looked up and saw that through one of those narrow little windows I’ve mentioned a reed appeared, with a handkerchief tied to the end of it, and the reed was moving about, almost as if it were signaling that we should come and take it. We thought about it, and one of the men who was with me went to stand under the reed to see if it would drop, or what would happen, but as soon as he reached the spot,