Part Bir [One] – Esir

Chapter ۱ - Bulaşıkçı

(1 – Scullion)

(Yeni Sarayi [New Palace, later renamed Topkapi Palace], Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, April 1586)

Almost exactly two hundred and ten years before a freshly nullified black eunuch still named Kodi arrived for the first time in the Ottoman Sultan’s main palace in Constantinople, the ‘Yeni Sarayi’ [see chapter 26 of ‘Ottomans ۱ (1): The Mountain Flower’ by Pueros], another boy began his duties there. He was a 10 year-old of Christian Albanian stock.

The boy’s family lived in the little rural village of Rojnik, near Berat in central Albania. The child had been selected, through the ‘devşirme’ system and on the basis of assessed promising ability, to serve the current Ottoman Sultan, Murad III.

The ‘devşirme’ system was effectively a boy tax. This human levy was imposed on mainly poor rural Christian families within the Ottoman Empire [see chapter 27 of ‘Ottomans ۱ (1): The Mountain Flower’ by Pueros for more details about the ‘devşirme’], of which Albania then formed a part.

Despite being compulsorily separated from him, the boy’s parents, though, were not too unhappy at the development. They had other sons to help them farm their small landholding and they could perhaps look forward to the young devşirme recruit rising in Ottoman service to attaining someday a prominent high-salaried position, which would be well beyond the family’s normal aspirations.

The boy, however, was unhappy to be taken from his home and family to go to distant Anatolia, where he would work temporarily on a Muslim farm. Here, he would build up physical strength, learn the Turkish language and be forcibly converted to Islam, suffering circumcision and being renamed Mehmed in the process to meet the requirements of his new Sunni faith. During this period of induction, his personal attributes were also carefully assessed to determine which future career path in Ottoman service should most suit him, namely administrative, military or artisan, and so be directed to the relevant school.

This assessment of the newly renamed Mehmed’s attributes resulted in him being honoured by transfer into the direct service of the Ottoman Sultan in the Yeni Sarayi in Constantinople. However, fortunately for the boy’s testes, he was not chosen for the order of white eunuchs.

Less fortunately for Mehmed’s future career prospects, he was also not immediately chosen for the elite palace school, or ‘enderûn’, for court pages either but instead found himself washing dishes as a mere scullion in the vast kitchens of the Ottoman Sultan’s huge main residence.

Chapter ۲ - Köy

(2 – Village)

(County Cork, Munster Province, southern Ireland, over 46 years later, June 1631)

A nine-year insurrection against English rule in the reign of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I took place in largely Roman Catholic Ireland between 1594 and 1603. However, the revolt was essentially defeated in 1602 when the Irish rebels supported by Spanish forces were comprehensively beaten at Kinsale in the County of Cork in Munster.

One of the most important of the rebellious clans in Munster, which is the southwestern of the four Irish Provinces, had been the O’Driscolls. The family controlled a large swathe of coastline in Cork from Cape Clear to Castlehaven and earned substantial revenues from the lucrative local fishing industry.

Having chosen the wrong side in the ultimately crushed insurrection, however, many members of the clan were subsequently forced into exile. Meanwhile, those managing to remain behind had been seriously impoverished by their involvement in the unsuccessful revolt.

Sir Fineen O’Driscoll, the family patriarch who had somehow made his peace with the English to avoid exile, was therefore forced to lease or sell many clan possessions. Amongst these properties was the coastal fishing village of Baltimore in west Cork, located virtually at Ireland’s southernmost point.

Baltimore was positioned in an idyllic setting of rocky and wooded hills, sea inlets and little offshore islands. The small community was actually divided into two distinct neighbourhoods, with a lower part, called ‘The Cove’, of three concentric rows of twenty-six thatched cottages in all along the harbourside and an upper section of about forty similar dwellings surrounding an O’Driscoll castle, which dominated the hillside above.

In fact, the very name of the village derived from this castle, being from the Gaelic ‘Baile an Tí Mhóir’, meaning ‘Town of the Great House’ and referring to the imposing and still extant clan fortress. However, the eponymous city in the USA was later not named after this particular Irish community.

George Calvert, English Secretary of State to Kings James I, had been awarded for loyal service the confiscated estate of another even smaller Baltimore, a manor in County Longford in the Province of Leinster, central Ireland, and later the eponymous Baronetcy. His son, Cæcilius, the 2nd Baronet, subsequently founded the Maryland Colony.

The O’Driscoll connection to the coastal village in southern Ireland remains today. Members of the clan gather in Baltimore, County Cork, Munster, from all over the world annually at the end of June.

Sir Fineen O’Driscoll leased Baltimore in 1606 to a Londoner, Thomas Crooke, who in turn sought to resettle into the now vacated properties in the village Protestant English immigrants, mainly from the fishing communities of Devon and Cornwall, whose skills should enable the place to flourish again. He completely succeeded in doing so within a couple of years.

Many of the settler families were actually already quite prosperous. They nevertheless sought a fresh start for various reasons, the commonest being, like the Pilgrims emigrating to America at roughly the same time, to escape the increasing contemporary intolerance of dissident Protestant sects in England.

Unfortunately, many of the peaceful, hard-working, prosperous and religiously devout Protestant English immigrants into Baltimore were not to be allowed to experience their new lives for long, for their nemesis was soon to arrive.

Chapter ٣ - Korsan

(3 - Pirate)

(Baltimore, west Cork, Munster, southern Ireland, 20th of June, 1631)

The imminent nemesis of many of these Protestant English immigrants into Baltimore was not to be returning and resentful O’Driscolls, wanting to reclaim their properties, or other discontent Catholic Irish people. Other souls, nefariously led by a Dutchman, Jan Janszoon from Haarlem in the Netherlands, were instead to prove their downfall.

Jan Janszoon had led a colourful and rather wicked life. He had become a Dutch privateer, namely the captain of a private ship authorised by his government to capture merchant vessels of hostile nations and share the spoils. However, he eventually decided that such official activities did not earn him sufficient profits and so took to ruthless independent piracy, basely, given his own origins, operating against Christian interests from ports on the Barbary Coast of North Africa [modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya].

Most of this Coast then formed part of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Here, the often quasi-independent local Governors, or ‘Pashas’, were happy to allow piratical activities to operate against Christian interests from their provinces and cities, particularly by the Muslim and mainly Arab Barbary Corsairs.

The Barbary Corsairs had already plagued the non-Ottoman parts of the Mediterranean, namely Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Malta, for hundreds of years and would continue to do so up to the 19th century. In this period, by concentrating on attacking shipping and coastal communities, they condemned well over a million Christians to ransom or slavery in Muslim lands.

The acquiescence of the local Pashas to the piratical activities was encouraged by the fact that income from such raids boosted not only their own territorial economies but also frequently their own pockets through discreet bribes. In fact, these Ottoman Governors actually often aided the relevant enterprises by unofficially allowing to accompany the expeditions some of their garrisons of Janissary soldiers [see ‘Ottomans ۱ (1): The Mountain Flower’ by Pueros for comprehensive details about the Janissary Corps].

Jan Janszoon’s own independent activities, though, were temporarily curtailed in 1618 when, at the age of about fifty, he was himself captured by Barbary Corsairs, who took him to Algiers. There, in order to avoid his own enslavement, and helped by his own clear expertise in the piratical profession, he joined their cause, converting to Islam and adopting the name of Murat Rais in the process.

Jan Janszoon eventually gained his own command as a Barbary Corsair. However, the new appointee proved more geographically adventurous than his colleagues and amongst his subsequent exploits was an audacious raid in 1627 on faraway Iceland, where he captured almost 250 young and fit people to return to North Africa to hold for ransom or be enslaved there. The older prisoners were locked in a church, which he then had evilly burnt to the ground with all inside.

Meanwhile, Jan Janszoon had, despite still having an undivorced wife and children back in the Netherlands, married an African Berber girl, with whom he fathered several children. Two of his sons, who became pirates too, eventually joined the colonists of New Amsterdam [modern New York], and the descendants of one of them apparently include the Vanderbilt family, Humphrey Bogart and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Now, in June 1631, Jan Janszoon had embarked with two Barbary galleys on another raiding and looting expedition, designed to secure lucrative pillage in Ireland, including more white Christian slaves. There was a large market for such human merchandise, to supplement similar booty acquired from heathen black Africa, in the Ottoman Empire, where enslaving fellow Muslims was frowned upon by Islamic teaching.

Jan Janszoon’s galleys were designed for speed. The vessels were long and sleek, with flat hulls and lateen masts, although often the chief propulsion came from the thirty slave oarsmen, kept in appalling conditions below decks.

Jan Janszoon’s turbaned pirates were significantly strengthened to over two hundred men for this particular enterprise by his own contingent of Ottoman Janissary soldiers, seeking to boost their unofficial incomes. They were armed with pistols and sabres and colourfully dressed in waistcoats, shirts, baggy trousers, curved slippers and distinctive pointed hats.

Jan Janszoon was also aided by the fortuitous capture at sea, just south of Cork, of a couple of Irish 12-ton fishing smacks. These boats, which were also used for small-scale coastal trading, were long, heavy, open-hulled vessels, black in colour because of their protective covering of pitch and propelled by both oars and a single mast.

One of these fishing smacks was captained by a Catholic man from Dungarvan, John Hackett, who, in return for the promise of subsequent release, agreed to guide Jan Janszoon to a nearby sleepy fishing village on the coast of Cork, which he claimed was unguarded and ripe for plunder. The fisherman’s treacherous attitude to the inhabitants of this small unprotected community was exacerbated by the fact that he resented the Protestant English immigrants now living there.

The village proved to be that of Baltimore, where Jan Janszoon, after an earlier secret daytime reconnoitre of the area with the co-operative John Hackett, and his Barbary pirates and Janissaries furtively attempted to land just after midnight on Midsummer’s Day, 1631.

Chapter ٤ - Akin

(4 - Raid)

(Baltimore, west Cork, Munster, Ireland, shortly afterwards)

The Barbary galleys, with the captured fishing smacks alongside, silently crossed Roaring Water Bay towards the moonlit harbour of the sleeping village of Baltimore. The current quietude of the vessels was assisted by the envelopment of the blades of their oars in caulk.

Most of the pirates and Janissaries still on their galleys subsequently transferred to the captured fishing smacks, whose strong hulls were designed for beaching. These vessels then headed for their nearby landfall.

The smacks eventually reached a stony beach, where great care was taken to prevent the hulls from noisily scraping the shingles. The pirates, armed with muskets and iron bars, and the Janissaries, in their bright red waistcoats, subsequently disembarked with similar silence and arranged themselves on the shore into the pre-planned twenty-six units. This number equalled that of the thatched cottages, laid out in three curved rows, of Baltimore’s now nearby harbourside neighbourhood, ‘The Cove’.

The twenty-six units next set out along a dirt path to attack each cottage of ‘The Cove’ simultaneously and they managed to achieve complete surprise in doing so. After all, piratical raids on the Irish mainland had previously been unknown and the assaults were timed for that part of the night, about 2 o’clock in the morning, when most of the inhabitants would be in their deepest sleep.

The Barbary pirates used their iron bars expertly to smash themselves quickly into the cottages, which were also set alight by skilfully improvised torches, made from twisted rope doused in oil. Most of the shocked occupants rather naturally subsequently ran from their blazing homes, only to be confronted by fierce, exotically dressed, heavily armed and uniformly bearded and dark-skinned men, cursing in a strange language and ominously waving their weapons threateningly.

Confused hysteria and terror amongst the largely unarmed occupants of the cottages soon helped to ensure that most of them, men, women and children of all ages, rapidly became the unresisting prized captives of the raiders, being led under guard along the dirt path to the waiting fishing smacks on the beach. Two men, though, Timothy Curlew and a widower, John Davis, who was attempting to protect his young son, did attempt to resist and were savagely slaughtered as an example to the others.

Over a hundred captured men, women and children of all ages were eventually later gathered on the beach, ready to be embarked on the waiting fishing smacks. However, the raiders had not yet finished.

There was still the upper part of the village of Baltimore to attack and in which to seek plunder.

Chapter ٥ - Çekilmek

(5 - Retreat)

(Baltimore, west Cork, Munster, Ireland, shortly afterwards)

Jan Janszoon’s incursion into the upper part of Baltimore proved, however, to be far less lucrative than the attack on ‘The Cove’ below. After smashing their way with the usual pre-planned co-ordination into the cottages present and torching them, the raiders secured only ten captives. The other inhabitants of this section of the village had seemingly been forewarned and had fled into the surrounding wooded hillside.

Having realised this unpalatable fact, Jan Janszoon and his men then heard the unsettling noise of musket-fire and a drumbeat from the hillside further above. They had been assured by John Hackett that the nearest English soldiers were over fifty miles away in Kinsale but they now worried that the sounds might indicate that the Irish fisherman had been wrong.

After carefully but quickly assessing the situation, Jan Janszoon concluded that remaining in Baltimore to try to acquire more captives or other plunder was not worth the risk in the circumstances. He therefore organised an orderly retreat back to the beach.

On the beach, given that the number of captives taken was not as great as originally hoped, Jan Janszoon went against his normal policy and ordered that all those taken prisoner, including the old and infirm, be loaded aboard the waiting fishing smacks. He believed that they might at least be of some value in terms of ransom if not as slaves. As a result, those not considered to be young and fit were spared possible bloody culling.

On the beach, John Hackett was offered the chance by Jan Janszoon to go with him to North Africa to avoid possible English vengeance. However, the Irish fisherman unwisely declined the opportunity.

Consequently, John Hackett, whose co-operation with the piratical raiders later became known to the English, was within a couple of years tracked down and arrested. For his treacherous role in respect of the inhabitants of Baltimore, he was subsequently hanged from a tree, deliberately chosen for the execution on a hilltop overlooking the village.

Two years before this hanging, though, amongst the Protestant English immigrant captives now forcibly embarked from the Baltimore beach onto one of the waiting fishing smacks was a pretty brown haired and eyed 6 year-old boy, whose family had recently emigrated from Devon but originally had Welsh roots.

Chapter ٦ - Yetim

(6 - Orphan)

(Roaring Water Bay, off Baltimore, west Cork, Munster, Ireland, shortly afterwards)

The captured inhabitants from Baltimore were taken on the fishing smacks the short distance to where the Barbary galleys lay at anchor in Roaring Water Bay. The captives were subsequently transferred to the pirate vessels.

As the pair of Barbary galleys later sailed quickly south from Ireland, keen to avert the attentions of an alerted Royal Navy, Jan Janszoon wondered whether English soldiers were at that moment really occupying devastated Baltimore. In fact, they were not because the pirate captain had been tricked.

An inhabitant of Baltimore, William Harris, who lived in a hillside cottage isolated from the rest of the upper part of the village but with a better view of ‘The Cove’ below, had eventually been awakened by the commotion in the harbourside community. Peering down, he had subsequently been shocked to observe the burning thatches and the exotically attired raiders rounding up captives.

Despite his shock and never having seen such exotic men before, Harris astutely quickly guessed who they were and what they were about from tales that he had been told about them. He also bravely did not attempt to escape but instead collected his own musket and began firing the weapon to alert the villagers in upper Baltimore, who had, from their more sheltered location, still remained ignorant about the dreadful happenings below them in ‘The Cove’. His action finally succeeded in warning most of them, causing them to flee successfully.

The quick-witted Harris had also summoned a neighbour, an ex-soldier whom he knew possessed an old army drum. After the raiders eventually advanced up the hill to upper Baltimore, he cleverly instructed this man to beat a military tattoo whilst he himself returned to firing his musket.

Harris’ ruse thankfully worked but too late for the over one hundred inhabitants of Baltimore already captured. The relevant list of these poor souls compiled at the time gave the names of the heads of most of the affected households plus who precisely had been taken from them.

This list of captives comprised in alphabetical order:-

John Amble - himself;

Stephen Broddebrooke - his wife (she great with child) and two children;

Edward Cherrye - himself;

Robert Chimor - his wife and four children;

Timothy Corlew - his wife;

Cooke - himself, his wife and maid;

Corent Croffine - himself, wife, daughter and three servants;

John Davis - his son;

Evans - himself and son;

Bessie Floodd - herself and son;

William Gunter - his wife, maid and seven sons;

John Harris - his wife, mother, three children and maid;

Ould Haunkin - himself, wife and daughter;

Robert Hunt - his wife;

Richard Meade - himself, wife, sister and four children;

Dermod Meregey - two children and maid;

William Mould - himself and son;

Christopher Norwey - himself, wife and child;

Ould Osburne - himself and maid;

Thomas Payne - himself, wife and two children;

Beese Peeter - her daughter;

Stephen Pierse - himself, wife, mother and three children;

Morris Power - his wife;

Alexander Pumery - his wife;

Abram Roberts - himself, wife and three children;

Sampson Rogers - himself and son;

John Ryder - himself, wife and two children;

John Slyman - himself, wife and two children;

William Symons - himself, wife and two children;

Richard Watts - himself, wife and two children.

This story mainly concerns one of the captives listed above. He was the very young only, and sadly now orphaned, son of one of the two recently slain inhabitants of Baltimore, John Davis.

The pretty 6 year-old brown haired and eyed orphan boy’s current name was Tom Davis.

Chapter ٧ - Yolculuk

(7 – Voyage)

(North Atlantic Ocean & western Mediterranean Sea, over the next few weeks)

Unlike those of the slave oarsmen on the Barbary galleys, the state of the accommodation in which the captives from Baltimore were kept below decks was relatively reasonable and they were also supplied with decent rations. Jan Janszoon and his pirates wanted to keep their potentially lucrative prizes alive for subsequent ransom or enslavement in North Africa.

Riding the waves in the dark and cramped below-deck environment, however, did cause problems for many of the captives. Despite being from a coastal fishing community, many of the women and children in particular had never previously been to sea.

Consequently, seasickness was common amongst the captives. This situation naturally made their circumstances much less pleasant than they might otherwise have been. However, another condition was even more distressful for all of them, and this was of the mental not physical type.

Adding to the distress of actually being abducted and confined to the hold of a galley at sea was the fact that all of the captives had previously heard appalling stories about Christians taken prisoner by Muslim pirates, whom they tended to categorise under the generic title of ‘Turk’ despite their actual ethnic diversity. Such tales commonly told of enslavement into terrible subsequent existences, perhaps as, for the men, usually short-lived galley oarsmen or quarry labourers and, for the women, harem concubines or servants for some high official or noble. The children might at best be destined for menial domestic chores in an Islamic household, with the worst scenarios for them best left unimagined.

As if the varying ideas relating to their as yet unknown destinies were not sufficiently unpalatable for the captives, with one possible unattractive example for the adult males actually being present with them in the Barbary galleys in the form of the oarsmen, there was one certainty that utterly horrified them. This inevitability was the undoubted eventual break-up of their family groups.

Consequently, mental fears about their future fates tended during the sea journey to be worse for the captives than any physical maladies, leading to regular weeping and prayers to their Christian God for salvation. However, their deity must not have listened to their desperate entreaties for no such deliverance ever came for most of them.

All of the captives, even the old and frail, did, though, somehow survive the voyage south from Ireland, down the North Atlantic Ocean, eventually skirting the Bay of Biscay and the western Iberian Peninsula, before subsequently heading west. The Straits of Gibraltar were then successfully traversed and the Mediterranean Sea crossed near to the North African coast until the port of Algiers appeared on the horizon.

At this time, Algiers comprised two distinct districts on the western side of a bay. On a steep hill, on the site of the ancient Roman city of Icosium, was a fortified citadel of white stone, glistening in the strong sunshine. The place was called ‘Qasba’ in Arabic, which has led to the modern word ‘casbah’.

Inside the white encircling walls of the Qasba were crowded the palace of the local Pasha, currently Hassan Khodja, several mosques and markets and a labyrinth of narrow lanes flanked by picturesque dwellings. Meanwhile, on the shoreline below lay the port area with two main quays.

The galleys carrying the Baltimore captives would soon dock at one of these quays because Algiers was at this time, and would remain for another three centuries, the chief homeport of the Barbary Corsairs.

Chapter ٨ - Konsolos

(8 – Consul)

(Algiers, North Africa, July 1631)

Rather amazingly, given the anti-Christian piratical activities of the locally-based Muslim Corsairs, furtively supported by the Pashas, there was an English Consul in Algiers. Such officials had been present in North Africa ever since Elizabeth I’s time, when a Moorish envoy, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, from the King of Fez in Morocco, had in 1600 visited the Queen’s court to discuss trade and an alliance against their main mutual enemy, Spain. A contemporary portrait of him, seen by the author of this story, hangs in the Tate Britain art gallery in London.

An English Consul was currently stationed in Algiers despite the fact that the locally-based Barbary Corsairs had caused serious damage to his country’s shipping in the Mediterranean in recent years. For example, in the period from 1609 to 1616, almost five hundred vessels had been recorded as being lost to them.

The Consuls naturally protested about such damaging piracy to the local Pashas. The latter invariably responded by diplomatically exhibiting sorrow and sympathy at the news and promising but never pursuing retribution against the Barbary Corsairs, from whom they instead simply continued secretly to receive their bribes.

The Consuls were fully aware of these political realities. However, they remained in post, mainly to assist whatever trade with England survived the piratical attentions of the Barbary Corsairs and also to monitor their nefarious doings and help their fellow countrymen caught up in them as best they could.

The current English Consul in Algiers was immediately alerted about the arrival there of his captive fellow nationals from Baltimore, Ireland. He was also given permission to see them in the well-guarded dockside warehouse to which they had been transferred from the galleys. However, this privilege was only granted by Jan Janszoon in case the envoy could pay a quick ransom to have some or all of them released.

The captives were naturally delighted to meet the English Consul, whom they believed would be able to rescue them from their plight. However, his powers to assist them were severely restricted.

The Consul knew that threats of English retribution for attacking the territory of his King and capturing and taking away local inhabitants would only be laughed at by both the Pasha and the Barbary Corsairs. After all, the Royal Navy, which represented the only possible means, was still well over a century away from becoming a power in the Mediterranean.

The Consul also did not have the funds to ransom the captives. In fact, all that he could do was to plead for their good treatment and to send despatches to appropriate officials in England and Ireland begging for help.

Disgracefully, over a decade was to pass before proper help finally arrived, by which time only two captives could be found who were able and willing to be ransomed in order to return to Baltimore.

Chapter ٩ - Seçme

(9 – Selection)

(Algiers, North Africa, a few days later)

Quickly appreciating that the English Consul was unable to pay any ransom and that the envoy’s attempts to secure financial help from his homeland would take at least a long time if any materialised at all, Jan Janszoon soon decided to sell his Baltimore captives. Doing so would not only rapidly enable him to pay his fellow Corsairs and the Janissary contingent, which had accompanied them on their recent raid, both of whom would be impatient for their rewards. Doing so also significantly further boosted his own wealth whilst at the same time eradicating the trouble and cost of the responsibility of keeping his captured prizes secure and well, enabling him instead to return to other lucrative piratical activities.

In order to secure maximum sale prices, the worst nightmares of the Baltimore families were now realised when they were all broken up into various categories, based on age, gender and physical condition. Much heart-rendering weeping and pleading on the part of the captives proved useless against this distressing development.

The various groups were destined to be offered separately to known merchants, generally specialising in different types of slave and trusted to offer fair prices. These traders might buy individuals or whole lots, with any residue sent to be sold in the relevant markets within Algiers’ hilltop Qasba. However, before this retail process began, a certain official was granted first choice of the human merchandise by Jan Janszoon. This customary honour was afforded to a representative of the local Pasha, as part of the usual bribe awarded to the Ottoman Governor.

If the Pasha’s representative chose some of the captives, their estimated value, mutually agreed after the usual haggling between him and Jan Janszoon, would be deducted from the similarly assessed monetary commission calculated as due to the Ottoman Governor. On this occasion, a selection was indeed made, which entailed some of the most attractive young women captured, who were now destined for the gubernatorial harem, and a few of the prettiest pre-pubescent boys.

Fatefully one of the boys included in this selection was young Tom Davis.

Chapter ۱٠ - Zanaatçı

(10 - Artisan)

(Algiers, North Africa, another few days later)

Tom and the other similarly aged and pretty boys, chosen by the Pasha’s representative, were, unlike the young women selected, actually not taken by him up the steep hillside to the Qasba, where the Ottoman Governor’s palace was located. In fact, none of them were ever to make the ascent or even come close to meeting their nominal new owner.

The still-shackled boys were instead transferred within the port of Algiers to a little quayside workshop, which was operated by a single Arab artisan and comprised a small ramshackle two-roomed wooden hut. There, they were securely locked inside in one of the rooms, which had a single barred window, some straw mattresses and a smelly slop bucket as the toilet.

Unlike when in the custody of the Barbary Corsairs, who took care of their lucrative captured prizes in order to aid their survival until they could sell them, the boys were subsequently not looked after very well over the next few days. The bearded solitary Arab artisan only offered them a little occasional water to drink, and none at all to wash, and he also denied them food altogether.

Consequently, after a few days in the stifling sweltering heat of a North African summer in the close confinement of the little room, the boys were not only hot and starving but also very weak. However, such a condition had been deliberately contrived to prepare them for what was to come.

The purging of the body through the denial of food over a few days was believed to be essential preparation for the ordeal that the boys were imminently to face. The concomitant weakness induced was also considered a useful by-product, making them easier to control through the relevant proceedings.

What these proceedings entailed became apparent on the boys’ fourth day of terrible confinement in the hut. Tom was chosen at random by the bearded Arab artisan to be the first to discover the answer when he was led by the man from the room in which he had been imprisoned to the other next door.

Inside this room, with whose equipment and furnishings Tom’s suffering mind took no initial interest, the boy’s shackles were removed and his by now soiled clothes stripped from him. He would never again wear the attire of western European society.

Tom was too unhappy and weak to offer any resistance to what was being done to him by the Arab, even the humiliating removal of his clothes. The boy also remained passive when his dirty and sweaty and now rather thin naked body was subsequently carefully washed.

Tom’s meek compliance even continued when he subsequently allowed his naked body to be firmly strapped, spreadeagled and face-upwards, to a nearby sturdy wooden table. He also failed to notice the old bloodstains on the surface on which he now rested.

Tom’s mental faculties only began to revive when he was next gagged to protect himself from biting his lips or tongue. They instantly became fully alert when he next felt his small pre-pubescent genitals being circled and compressed by a thin leather cord.

Tom, the young 6 year-old captive, or ‘esir’ in Ottoman Turkish, then ominously felt a knife press against the delicate flesh of his middle scrotum.

(To be concluded in: ‘Part Iki [Two] – Kâhya’)