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high, that it seemed impossible for poor friendless creatures like us ever to pay it. The thought of perpetual servitude, together with the hard treatment we met with, quite overcame my poor companions. They drooped, and died one after another. I still thought it not impossible to mend my condition, and perhaps to recover my freedom. We worked about twelve hours in the day, and had one holiday in the week. I employed my leisure time in learning to make mats and flag-baskets, in which I soon became so expert, as to have a good many for sale, and thereby got a little money to purchase better food, and several small conveniences. We were afterwards set to work in the emperor's gardens; and here I showed so much good-will and attention, that I got into favour with the overseer. He had a large garden of his own; and he made interest for me to be suffered to work for him alone, on the condition of paying a man to do my duty. I soon became so useful to him, that he treated me more like a hired servant than a slave, and gave me regular wages. I learned the language of the country, and might have passed my time comfortably enough, could I have accommodated myself to their manners and religion, and forgot my native land. I saved all I could, in order to purchase my freedom; but the ransom was so high, that I had little prospect of being able to do it for some years to come. A circumstance, however, happened, which brought it about at once. Some villains, one night, laid a plot to murder my master, and plunder his house. I slept in a little shed in the garden where the tools lay; and being awakened by a noise, I saw four men break through the fence, and walk up an alley towards the house. I crept out with a spade in my hand, and silently followed them. They made a hole with instruments in the house-wall, big enough for a man to enter at. Two of them had got in; and the third was beginning to enter when I rushed forward, and with the blow of my spade clove the skull of one of the robbers, and gave the other such a stroke on the shoulder as disabled him. I then made a loud outcry to alarm the family. My master and his son, who lay in the house, got up, and having let me in, we secured the two others, after a sharp conflict, in which I received a severe wound with a dagger. My master, who looked upon me as his preserver, had all possible care taken of me; and as soon as I was cured, made me a present of my liberty. He would fain have kept me with him; but my mind was so much bent on returning to my native country, that I immediately set out to the nearest seaport, and took my passage in a vessel going to Gibraltar,
