CHAPTER XLI.

IN WHICH THE CAPTIVE STILL CONTINUES HIS ADVENTURES

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Before fifteen days were over our renegade had already purchased an

excellent vessel with room for more than thirty persons; and to make

the transaction safe and lend a colour to it, he thought it well to

make, as he did, a voyage to a place called Shershel, twenty leagues

from Algiers on the Oran side, where there is an extensive trade in

dried figs. Two or three times he made this voyage in company with the

Tagarin already mentioned. The Moors of Aragon are called Tagarins in

Barbary, and those of Granada Mudéjares; but in the Kingdom of Fez they

call the Mudéjares Elches, and they are the people the king chiefly

employs in war. To proceed: every time he passed with his vessel he

anchored in a cove that was not two crossbow shots from the garden

where Zoraida was waiting; and there the renegade, together with the

two Moorish lads that rowed, used purposely to station himself, either

going through his prayers, or else practising as a part what he meant

to perform in earnest. And thus he would go to Zoraida’s garden and ask

for fruit, which her father gave him, not knowing him; but though, as

he afterwards told me, he sought to speak to Zoraida, and tell her who

he was, and that by my orders he was to take her to the land of the

Christians, so that she might feel satisfied and easy, he had never

been able to do so; for the Moorish women do not allow themselves to be

seen by any Moor or Turk, unless their husband or father bid them: with

Christian captives they permit freedom of intercourse and

communication, even more than might be considered proper. But for my