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