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By Root 656 0

the reed was raised and moved from side to side, as if shaking its head no. The Christian came back, and again the reed was raised and lowered with the same movements as before. Another of my companions approached, and again the same thing happened. Then the third man approached, the same thing was repeated, and seeing this, I wanted to try my luck, too, and as soon as I placed myself under the reed it was dropped inside the bagnio and fell at my feet. I immediately untied the handkerchief, which had a knot in it, and inside were ten cianiís, which are coins of base gold used by the Moors, each one worth ten of our reales. It goes without saying that I was delighted with this discovery, and my happiness was as great as my amazement at the thought of where that gift had come from, and why it was directed to me, since the signs of not wanting to drop the reed for anyone but me clearly indicated that I was the object of the favor.

I took the money, broke the reed, returned to the roof, looked at the window, and saw an extremely white hand emerge and open and close the window very quickly. With this we understood or imagined that a woman who lived in that house must have done us this kindness, and as a sign that we thanked her for it we made our salaams in the Moorish manner, bending our heads, bowing from the waist, and crossing our arms on our chests. A short while later a small cross made of reeds was dangled from the window and immediately pulled back in. This con-firmed that a Christian woman was probably a captive in that house and was the one who had done us the good turn, but the whiteness of her hand and the bracelets we saw on it disabused us of the thought that she was a slave; then we imagined she must be a renegade Christian, for they are often taken as legitimate wives by their masters, who consider this good fortune since the men esteem them more than the women of their own nation. In all our speculations, however, we were very far from the truth of the matter, although from then on we spent all our time looking at the window where our north star of a reed had appeared; but two weeks went by, and we did not see it again, or the hand, or any other signal of any kind.

During this time, although we made every effort to learn who lived in that house, and if there was a renegade Christian woman there, no one would tell us anything except that it belonged to a very prominent and wealthy Moor named Agi Morato,6 who had been the governor of La Pata,7 which is a very distinguished position among those people. But when we least expected another shower of cianiís, we suddenly saw the reed appear, another handkerchief attached to it that had an even larger knot; this occurred when the bagnio, as on the previous occasion, was deserted and empty of people. We made the same test: each of the three men, the same ones who had been with me the last time, went forward before I did, but the reed was not given up to anyone but me, because as soon as I walked forward, it dropped. I untied the knot and found forty Spanish gold escudos and a paper written in Arabic, at the bottom of which a large cross had been drawn. I kissed the cross, took the escudos, and returned to the roof, where we all made our salaams; the hand appeared again, I signaled that I would read the letter, and the window closed.

We were all astounded and overjoyed at what had happened, but since none of us understood Arabic, our desire to know what the paper said was immense, and the difficulty in finding someone to read it to us was even greater. Finally, I decided to trust a renegade, a native of Murcia, who claimed to be a great friend of mine and made pledges to me obliging him to keep any secrets I confided in him, because certain renegades, when they intend to return to Christian lands, take with them signed statements from important captives testifying, in whatever fashion they can, that the renegade is a moral man, and always has treated Christians well, and desires to escape at the first opportunity. Some obtain these declarations with good intentions;