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more I was ransomed, having given the money to a merchant from Valencia who was in Algiers at the time, and who ransomed me from the king by promising to pay the money after the next ship arrived from Valencia; if he paid right away, the king would suspect that my ransom had been in Algiers for some time and the merchant had concealed it for his own profit. Then, too, my master was so suspicious that I did not dare to pay out the money all at once. On the Thursday before the Friday when the beautiful Zoraida was to leave for the estate, she gave us another thousand escudos, and informed us that she was leaving, and asked that if I were to be ransomed, I should learn where her father’s country estate was and at all costs find a reason for going there and seeing her. I responded with few words, saying that I would, and that she should be sure to commend all of us to Lela Marién with the prayers the slave woman had taught her.

After this, my three companions were ransomed to facilitate our leaving the bagnio, because if they saw me ransomed when they were not, and there was enough money, they might become alarmed and the devil could persuade them to do some harm to Zoraida; even though their being the men they were could have allayed this fear, still, I did not want to endanger the plan in any way, and so I had them ransomed in the same manner that I ransomed myself, giving all the money to the merchant so that he could offer a guaranty for us with confidence and security, but never disclosing our plans and our secret to him because of the danger that would have entailed.”

CHAPTER XLI

In which the captive continues his tale

“Before two weeks had passed, our renegade bought a very good boat with room for more than thirty people, and to guarantee the success of his plan and lend it credibility, he wanted to sail to a town called Sargel, some thirty leagues from Algiers in the direction of Oran, where there is a brisk trade in dried figs. He made the trip two or three times, accompanied by the Tagarino he had mentioned. In Barbary they call the Moors from Aragón Tagarinos and the ones from Granada Mudéjares: in the kingdom of Fez the Mudéjares are called Elches, and these are the people used most by the king in war.

In any event, each time the renegade passed by in his boat he anchored in a cove not two crossbow shots from the country estate where Zoraida was waiting; there the renegade very purposefully joined the Moors who were at the oars, either to say a zalá or to rehearse what he actually intended to do, and so he would go to Zoraida’s house and ask for fruit, and her father gave it to him and did not recognize him; although he wanted to speak to Zoraida, as he later told me, and tell her that she should be happy and free of doubt, because he was the man who would take her, on my orders, to a Christian land, it was not possible, because Moorish women do not allow any Moor or Turk to see them unless instructed to do so by their husbands or fathers. They allow Christian captives to spend time with them and talk to them, even more than is reasonable, yet it would have made me unhappy if he had spoken to her, because she might have been alarmed to see that her affairs were being discussed by renegades. God willed otherwise, however, and our renegade did not have the opportunity to carry out his virtuous desire, but he saw that he could go back and forth to Sargel in safety and anchor whenever and however and wherever he chose, and that the Tagarino, his partner, followed his instructions to the letter; I had been ransomed, and all he needed to do was find Christians to man the oars, and so he told me to decide which of the prisoners, besides those who had been ransomed, I wanted to take with me, and to arrange for them to be ready on the following Friday, which he had determined should be the day of our departure.

Consequently I spoke to twelve Spaniards, all of them valiant oarsmen who could leave the city without difficulty; it was no easy task finding so many at that time, because twenty ships were out making