Marie looked out of the glass port in her tiny cabin.
Governesses returning home in disgrace could hardly afford large cabins. Indeed, she
knew she was lucky to have a cabin at all for the small coastal brigantine, as well as
carrying a valuable cargo of silks and cottons, was carrying half a dozen other pretty
young women. They were taking passage from Naples to try their luck in the fleshpots of
Genoa - and the gallant young officers of French Army who were now stationed there. Two,
the mistresses of French officers and clearly expectant, were their way to rejoin their
lovers.
There were also several peasant girls going north to seek work in the wine vineyards.
The mountainous coast of Tuscany was eerily outlined in the evening twilight as the
vessel slid slowly through the calm sea. In the distance Marie saw the strange looking
ship that had been slowly getting closer since noon. The friendly young Second Mate had
told her that with its lanteen sails it was probably a ship out Algiers, one the Barbary
Ports. However, there was no need for any alarm, he assured her, for such ships frequently
brought grain from the rich plains of North Africa to feed either Napoleon's armies or the
British Navy blockading the French Fleet.
It was now two years since the shattering victory in 1805 of the Royal Navy over the
French and Spanish Navies at Trafalgar, and since then the remnants of the French Fleet in
Toulon had scarcely dared to go to sea.
But the British, now masters of the sea, just as Napoleon was master of continental
Europe, continued to be preoccupied with the close blockade of the French naval base of
Toulon - and the Moslem rulers of North Africa continued to take advantage of the
situation by trading with both adversaries, for both needed their grain. Meanwhile the
Barbary corsairs continued to raid the now often defenceless Christian coastal villages of
the Mediterranean and to capture its shipping.
A sudden gale of youthful female laughter swept in through the open port. Evidently up
on deck several of the girl passengers were flirting with the younger members of the small
crew.
Marie sighed. For three years she too had laughed and flirted with the widowed Conte de
San Luca whilst looking after his young daughter. The daughter herself of a now penniless
French émigré family, who had escaped from France at the time of the Revolution, she had
found life hard in Naples. So at the age of eighteen, she had been only too delighted to
accept the position of Governess to the amorous Conte. He had lost no time in seducing the
pretty and vivacious French girl, whose long blonde hair made her an unusual sight in
Naples.
Marie had expected the rich old man to marry her and been dismayed as it gradually
became clear to her that a Neapolitan Conte might well sleep with a delightful young
French Governess in his employ, but would certainly not marry one.
Then two things had happened.
Firstly the Conte had suddenly married the equally gorgeously blond young Carolina, a
well-known beauty from the Neapolitan aristocracy. But Carolina was no fool and she was a
determined young woman. She had soon guessed that the unhappy Marie was her husband's
Mistress and was determined to get rid of her as soon as possible.
Then, her chance had come a year later when the Conte, returning from a late night
amorous assignation in a dubious part of Naples had been robbed and killed, leaving the
popular Contessa Carolina de San Luca rich. Not only was she now the proud owner of her
late husband's palazzo in Naples, but also of his large estate along the coast including
the pretty village of San Luca itself with it's restored castello, which provided a
delightful escape in the summer months from the heat and smells of Naples.
The beautiful and now widowed young Contessa had wasted no time. She had sent her young
stepdaughter off to her aunts, and dismissed the now unemployed Marie. How had Marie hated
that stuck-up bitch!
Meanwhile Marie's parents had accepted Napoleon's offer for French émigré families to
return to France. Marie was now on her way to rejoin them in Provence where she hoped she
could start a new life - away from all the wounding memories of Naples, and away from the
hated young Contessa.
It was a moonless night. No one aboard the poorly crewed and well-lit brigantine had
noticed that the darkened Barbary ship had made more sail and was now only a few cables
astern. A sudden little gust of wind brought her right up alongside. The watch on deck
screamed as the black painted ship suddenly loomed up on the starboard side.
It was all over in seconds. A well trained boarding party of twenty armed Janissaries,
their scimitars gripped between their teeth, swung from ropes onto the brigantine's almost
deserted decks. They then rushed up onto the poop deck where the terrified Officer of the
Watch and the equally scared Quartermaster were cowering. They were slaughtered out of
hand.
When the Captain and officers came panting up from below to see what was going on, they
were unceremoniously flung overboard. Only the youngest members of the crew, still boys,
escaped following them.
Then having seized control of the ship, the corsairs began to seek out the passengers
and to examine the cargo.
It had all been done remarkably silently, and Marie was still asleep in her bunk when the
door burst open and two dark skinned Arabs, dressed in turbans and voluminous trousers,
pulled her, screaming and just wearing her nightdress, out into the corridor and onto the
deck. Here there was no sign of the crew of the ship. She was astonished instead to see,
now secured alongside, a black painted ship with a mixture of square and lanteen yards,
and with its sails brailed up.
Before she had to time to take in what was happening, the two Arabs dragged her across
the deck of the brigantine and onto that of what she now realised be that of a corsair
ship - presumably the innocent looking ship they had sighted earlier in the day.
She was taken up in front of a smartly dressed Turkish looking man wearing a turban and
a long robe. He had swash-buckling moustaches and a fierce eye. He was evidently the Rais,
or Captain, of the corsair ship.
A pretty young white boy was standing alongside him holding up a lantern.
Also standing alongside this terrifying looking man was huge black African dressed in
just a pair of red Turkish pantaloons with a white felt conical hat on his head.
Behind them stood a burly looking Arab with what looked like a pile of chains at his
feet. He was holding a strange looking instrument, like a pair of large squeezers.
The Rais looked closely at her as, terrified, she struggled unavailingly in the arms of
the two Arabs, screaming to be let loose. Then he stroked her long blonde hair approvingly
and, turning to the African, he nodded.
The African stepped forward and, in a sudden gesture, ripped down her nightdress,
leaving her standing naked. Appalled she tried to hide her body with her hands, but the
now grinning Arabs held her tight. The Rais glanced at her small firm breasts, her slim
waist, and her flowing hips.
Then he turned to the huge African and pointed enquiringly with a finger at her gently
swelling stomach. The black man stepped forward and began to run his hand expertly over
the wriggling girl's naked belly, bending down to examine it closer. Finally he
straightened up and shook his head.
"A pity," said the Rais in Turkish. Shame-faced with embarrassment Marie was mystified.
She would have appalled if she had understood his next words. "A pretty blond woman like
this is going to be worth a lot, but she'd be worth even more if she was also carrying a
child. But see if she is still a virgin - that would also put her value up considerably!"
The two Arabs kicked her legs apart and forced her down so that her knees were now
slightly bent. They held her more tightly than ever.
The African came behind her and, holding her with one hand on her belly put the other
down between her legs. Marie gave sudden scream of protest and horror. But clearly the
African was very experienced and quickly established what he was seeking.
Again he straightened up and again shook his head.
"So!" laughed the Rais. "A double pity! But even so, with hair like hers she'll still
fetch a high price. And, knowing the slave dealers of Marsa, I'd be surprised if they
didn't have her covered, as they say, before they offer her for sale. Even if they don't,
we certainly don't want to risk her trying to harm herself before we get back to port. So
cage her like the pregnant ones!"
The African gestured to the two Arabs to lead her, now silent and ashamed, over to the
burly Arab. He picked up a pair of wrist manacles, linked by a short length of chain, from
the pile of chains. Quickly he fastened them onto the wrists of the still unresisting
Marie. Then he inserted a lead pellet into each manacle and squeezed it tight with his
instrument. He stood back. Marie was now chained and it would take much hammering and the
use of another special instrument to free her.
Then bent down and fastened a set of similar manacles round her ankles. Both sets of
manacles were lined with velvet to prevent them from chafing.
The two Arabs released her and the African led her, hobbling, over to where a group of
women, naked and chained like herself, were standing in horrified silence in the half
darkness.
Marie recognised several of her young fellow passengers, all looking as cowed and
ashamed at their nakedness and chains herself. Evidently the corsairs had long before
learned that stripping and chaining a captured white woman, and forbidding her to speak,
was a simple way of ensuring her their docility.
Shocked, she saw that the group included the two pregnant young women.
She was about to say something to a particular woman with whom she had struck up a
shipboard friendship. But her friend raised her manacled hands to her face and put her
finger to her lips, pointing with a scared look at another burly African who was watching
them carefully. He carried a short whip.
"Yes, woman," he said to Marie in a strangely high pitched voice, speaking in the local
lingua franca of the central Mediterranean - a sort of bastardised Italian and Arabic that
Marie found she could easily understand. "No talking!"
He raised his whip menacingly. Marie slunk into a terrified silence.
Soon three more naked and chained women, all equally horrified and cowed, were thrust
into the group.
Then, when apparently no more suitable young women could be found on board the
brigantine, the two Africans gestured to the women to go down a companionway that led down
into the hold of the corsair ship.
In the dim light of a candle, Marie saw that round the sides of the hold were shelves,
like platforms, hanging on chains from the deck head. Lying chained on the platforms, were
a dozen naked young European women - evidently captured from previous attacks on Christian
ships or villages.
They lay with their feet towards the edge of the shelf, and were held there by a long
chain that was threaded through the big links in the middle of several adjoining girls'
ankle chains. Thus by unfastening one securing chain, the white women's black overseers
could release a group of several young women on one shelf, and take them one group at a
time to be exercised in a specially screened off part of the upper deck, or to be to be
fed and washed.
At other times they could be released to answer calls of nature - using the big
open-topped conical shaped tubs that stood in the corners of the hold. The wider ends of
the tubs rested on the deck so that the roll of the ship did not upset them. They were
lifted up out of the hold and emptied over the side twice a day, before being replaced
half full of seawater.
Marie remembered with a shudder seeing a drawing of a somewhat similar arrangement of
shelves in European slave ships used for carrying African slaves across the Atlantic. Mon
Dieu, she thought, as she saw the two Negroes lifting up groups of girls onto empty
shelves and passing a chain through their ankle manacles, she was going to be treated just
like that!
But there was a difference. The drawing had shown simple uneducated African men and
women being chained down naked onto their platforms by cruel looking white seamen,
carrying short whips. But here it was white women, many well educated, who were being
chained down naked onto similar platforms, and not by white men but by equally cruel
looking black men, also carrying short whips.
The Africans might well be eunuchs specially embarked to take charge of all women
captured during the Corso, but they were still terrifying to look at with their blood shot
eyes and faces decorated with tribal scaring.
Marie looked with dismay at the shelf onto she was apparently about to be chained down
by her feet. Then suddenly she was grabbed by the two black eunuchs.
"You special! You blonde!" one of them grunted in his high-pitched Lingua Franca. "Rais
want sell you for plenty money on arrival. He not want risk you harming yourself. You go
into special cage - like pregnant girls."
Marie saw a stack of long low wooden cages in the centre of the hold. They were some two
metres long, one metre high and one metre wide. There were six cages, stacked in two lots
of three, one above the other. There were already two girls lying on their backs in the
top two cages.
Before she could say anything one of the Africans let down the square end of one of the
cages in the middle row. The two of them lifted her up and thrust her, wriggling and
protesting, down into the cage. Quickly one of them went to the far end of the cage and
let down a square in that end. Then he fastened her ankles manacles to the end of the cage
whilst the other African fastened her wrist manacles to the roof of her cage just above
her head.
She was, she realised, now held down helplessly on her back. Just how helplessly she
only realised when the two Africans went round to the side of her cage and slid back
several of the bars. She was quite unable to do anything as they again checked that she
really was neither pregnant nor a virgin.
She had to lie there, longing to push away their probing hands, with her chained fists
opening and closing in frustration above her face. She saw that the roof of her cage was
made of slatted wood. Through the gaps in the wood, she could see the body of the girl
above her. She felt similar slats underneath her own back and buttocks, before one of the
black eunuchs lifted up her bottom so that his colleague could feel her up her better.
Desperately embarrassed she blushed silently.
She saw that hanging below the slats under the buttocks of the girl above her was a
black bowl. It would, Marie realised with a shock, catch the girl's wastes. Presumably
there was another one hanging in the cage below her to catch her own wastes.
Satisfied, the two Africans closed the side of her cage again. Then they repeated the
whole process with Marie's two pregnant fellow passengers, putting them into the other
cages. But, in their case, when the Africans slid back the bars at the sides of their
cages to feel their bellies, it was to check that their progeny were still kicking away,
as their mothers lay chained helplessly on their backs, unable now to get at the little
creatures they were carrying - creatures that would greatly increase the value of their
young mothers...
Soon Marie was to learn that not for her, or the other caged women, were the short daily
little runs round the shrouded off part of the upper deck where the black eunuchs used
their whips to make the other chained young women run awkwardly run round and round,
before being hosed down, fed and watered.
No, as the Rais had said, she was a particularly valuable piece of merchandise and was
to be kept lying on her back, like the pregnant women, unable to touch her body. This
lasted for three days as the corsair ship, followed by the captured brigantine, and now
sailed by a Barbary prize crew, made its way to Marsa. It was in Marsa that the Rais felt
that he would get the best prices for both the valuable human and material cargo that he
had found onboard the brigantine.
Meanwhile the two black eunuchs would feed Marie and the other women in the cages by
dropping down the end of the cages behind their heads, and spooning nourishing food into
their mouths. Then sliding back the bars at the side, they would encourage each blushing
girl to perform into the little bowls hanging below their cages, and then proceed to them
all over like nurses giving a patient a blanket bath.
Such then was Marie's introduction to her new life as a white slave in Barbary.
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