Of all the unpleasantness that I suffered in the bagnio, perhaps the most surprising that I tolerated was becoming closer acquainted with Jonah Ramsbottom, esquire.   Enduring the monotony of breaking rocks all day under the sapphire bowl of a Moroccan sky is as sure a way to end a sullen disinterest in pursuing any form of social intercourse.

Typically we would be grouped into threes or fours and instructed to fill a basket with crushed rock.   We had to fill the basket four times in a turn at the quarry to qualify for our rations at the bagnio. It was whilst hammering away upon the great stones that splintered beneath our blows, with numb fingers clasped around our sledgehammers, that the silence between Jack, Ramsbottom and myself also began to crack.   At first, we spoke little more than requests to take a full basket to the waiting cart.  It soon progressed to more advanced communication when manoeuvring new stones into place.  In our weakened state it required more than one of us to achieve this.

"Mind what you're doing, you pimping dog!"  was a typical utterance as one of us snatched our toes away from the descending face of a rolling stone.

"Well, keep your fat feet out of the way then, you mincing molly!"  would be the expected reply.

Once words had been spoken, it was hard to keep the sluice gates shut.  Resentful admonishments were soon replaced with ironic comments on our fellows.

"That c-cove needs to take more care," Ramsbottom said on one such occasion, pausing to watch the distant commotion that erupted after one man's hammerhead detached itself from the handle on the upswing and struck his partner full in the face, felling him outright.    I could see Hassan screaming and shouting at the careless man, pointing at his prostrate comrade.   A guard had stepped up to the group, joining in the pointing with his jambiya, which glittered in the bright sun.  "He could have someone's eye out."

"Aye, that'll hurt," Jack said, then added, "and he'll have to pay for the repairs."

"There'll be no f-fixing that.  He's b-buggered."

"If not now, then later,"   I said with a smile, knowing full well what went on at the bagnio after dark.

We did not laugh loudly but we did laugh.  One of our brothers was perhaps slain but adversity makes one hard to suffering.  Any one of us could have fallen victim to a worm-eaten handle but thankfully the Angel of Death's dread gaze had again passed over us.   Our time in this mortal realm was not yet up, and that was something that we could smile about.   Even Ramsbottom.

"At least it was q-quick,"  he said.

"Does it make a difference?"  I replied.  "The outcome is the same, no matter how you get there."

He faced me then and a look of such sadness filled his eyes.  I confess I had not seen such an expression upon his face before.   It was almost one of compassion, or even grief.  "It makes a difference," he said quietly.   "I could tell you of the things I've seen.   My old sire went badly when his time came."

I was about to tender my sympathies to Ramsbottom when Hassan ran over and interrupted.

"Come, Matthew!" he said with a grin.   "You are summoned, by that fat bastard-son-of-a-camel's whore!"  He gestured over his shoulder at the abid, a far surlier fellow than Mohammed ever was. "Bring the idiot, too."   Ramsbottom grimaced as if he knew what Hassan was saying.  "We'll need him for extra muscle."

Puzzled, I nodded to Hassan, gesturing for Ramsbottom and Jack to follow . To be honest he did not need much encouragement.   Breaking stones was a labour of such drudgery that any cessation in our routines was welcome because it afforded an opportunity to stretch cramped muscles, massage sore hands, or gain a cup of water.  However Hassan had indicated some urgency so we placed our tools in a basket and stayed close behind our friend as he made his way back across the quarry.

There was a lot of arguing, shouting and pushing amongst the knot of men standing around our fallen comrade, but they all stood back as Hassan went up to the presiding abid and knelt in the white dust.

"It was an accident!"   Faisal shouted across at Sergio da Lazaretto, a shipwrecked Venetian lately drafted to La Ruse's oar deck.   "The fucking thing broke."

"The fuckeeng theeng broka because you are a piscialetto! Coglione!"   Sergio screamed back. "An' now hees head is leaking over the ground like a lobster pot!"

"I have brought men, lord," Hassan said, his voice almost inaudible such was the clamour.

The abid detached his black veil from his tagelmust, uncovering his dark, scarred face, before speaking to Hassan.  "Get this fool out of here.  Carry him to the physician's house in the Street of the Prophets.   If he dies, get him buried before nightfall."

With this proclamation, our guard glared at us, muttering a stream of imprecations as we struggled with the stricken man.

We rolled the bloodied fellow onto a length of board that the quarreymen used to stand upon when hacking at the rock face.  He was in a pitiful condition.  Not only was there an ugly wound upon his forehead, from which depended a ragged scrap of skin that hung below his eyes, but his eyes were swollen shut, both blackening in an ominous manner.  Brown fluid trickling from his ears told me that this fellow was likely doomed.   I could not see a physician of Salé wasting his time on a galley slave's fractured skull.  I had seen these before in an anatomy class, as well as with MacPhail when he was condemning men to the deep because of his antique learning.

Once lashed to the plank with a scrap of cordage, Hassan, Ramsbottom, Jack and I lifted the poor man up.   With one of us at each corner of the bending timber, we struggled out of the quarry and descended down into the town, Hassan hollering out for directions from the locals.   A pair of abid were sent with us, riding their steeds with lances in hand, aloof yet alert.  They made no effort to lead, nor to assist in our search for the physician's house but if we showed any signs of dawdling, a jab from their spear points was our reward.

The streets were crawling with people of every shade and colour.   Slaves were everywhere, either as white Europeans, swarthy Arabs or black Africans.   Free Moors: Berber, Bedouin and Touareg, strode among them, striding this way and that in the throng, intent on their business.   Infinite shades of indigo tinted shesh and tagelmust adorned heads in every direction.  Abid could be easily spotted by their black turbans that mimicked those of the Touareg, or took on a more imposing presence in the same style as those alosho that Hausa from the deep desert wore.  Sheep and goats skipped along with their shepherds, the flocks pressing their way through the mass, hastening to the slaughterman's knife, filling the air with their bleating.  Merchants hawked their pots, baskets, clothes, shoes, baskets, rugs, fruit, vegetables, bread, and brass-ware at the top of their voices from stalls or open shutters.   The stink of ordure filled the narrow streets as well as the stink of humanity, yet still through this morass wafted the delicious scents of new baked bread, pungent spices and cooking meat.

Ignoring these welcome distractions from our drudgery, we shoved our way through the heaving mass, stone dust billowing from our rags and hair, the dead weight of our senseless charge on his lath tearing at the skin of our hands.  In every direction voices assaulted us, and not a few blows from the more incensed in the crowd.  Our abid laughed when one particularly angry fellow struck Ramsbottom with his shoe and cursed him for a worthless infidel.  To my surprise Ramsbottom did not stand there meekly, accepting his chastisement.   Instead he bawled out a stream of threats and oaths in voice that would not have been out of place on the Betsy's quarterdeck.   The little Bedouin put a hand to his jambiya and blood would have been spilt if our abid had not decided to intervene at that point.  A sharp word from them sent the man scurrying on his way, and a sharp prod forced us on.

We threaded our way through the alleys and ginnels of the town and moved closer to the centre of the Medina.  My arms felt as if I had spent a day under the rack's tender embrace.  I thought I could not last another step but finally we emerged in front of the Souk El-Kebir, where two affairs showed us why so many people were in attendance in Salé, and all thoughts of my burning arms were driven from my head.

The Souk was not of great significance as a market.   It was typical of such places: a covered maze of shops and courtyards, selling every imaginable thing,  both of domestic necessity or depraved indulgence.   However, the Souk El-Kebir was the principal slave market, and trading was well under way upon our arrival.  Men, women and children, recently unloaded on the harbourside from such places as Devon, Cornwall, Pembrokeshire, Kerry, Cork, Normandy and Brittany, huddled together in as melancholy a picture of human misery as anything I have seen since.  All was bustle and shouting but to this day, I swear I heard one fellow sing a lament in as sweet a brogue as distress would allow.

Now come is my departing time,

And here I may no longer stay,

There is no kind comrade of mine

But will desire I were away.

But if that time will me permit,

Which from your company doth call,

And me enforces for to flit,

Good night, and God be with you all.

The reason for their unhappiness was more than due to the expectation that they would be sold into a life of servitude, or their families split,  or their womenfolk abused and children debauched.  In a plaza close to the mouth of the Street of the Prophets, all had born witness to an execution of several men known to me from the gaol.  It was a warning to all who would think of escape.

Two had been strangled before the assembly.  Tied to a post, a cord wrapped around their necks and tightened, the men bore their agonies upon their swollen, twisted features.  The last had been hanged by his thumbs and had his back flayed.  Whether this was done when he was dead or alive, I could not tell.   Knowing Moulay Ismail's brutes, it would have been the latter.  He was still, swinging slightly above the pool of sticky blood that had collected beneath his feet.  All that moved was the mass of black flies that feasted upon his exposed, raw flesh.  Before all, the ever present abid strutted, ranting at the crowd, terrifying the new slaves with prophecies of their doom in a similar fashion should they fail to please their new masters.

Beneath the shouting of the abid, the laughter and chattering of buyers, spectators and merchants, the wailing of children, and the lone bard singing his lament, there was a sound I would never forget.

A low moan, that was almost like the wailing of the wind around the eaves of a house, filled the air.    It set my teeth on edge and the hairs on my encrusted arms stood up in a prickle of goose-flesh.   With their hands and feet bound, their necks in wooden yokes, the slaves could do little else but howl their ill-fortune to have been seized by the dread Salé Rovers.  I have seen slave markets since but I shall never forget my first.   Even now, when the darkness closes about me, I wonder about the children that were there.  Are they dead?   Did the boys grow up destined for the oar?  Did the girls go to the harem, only to bear children to a Moorish husband, forgetting the language spoken in the green fields and hedgerows of home?  Who would know?  They were (and are still) but some of the many preyed upon by the Barbary Corsairs.

"Come on!"  Hassan urged us, interrupting my thoughts.   "Let us not tarry, less our friends wish to string up another for more sport.   The bloodlust is upon them!"

Thankfully our destination was close by.  The Street of the Prophets led away from that terrible place and it was not long before we were directed to a low, blue studded door, set in a blank, limed wall.   One of our abid rode up to it and hammered upon it with the butt of his lance.  A hatch set within opened and a neatly bearded face peered out from behind iron bars.

"Yes?"  our interlocutor enquired.

"Pasha de Croix's crew with an injured man, physician," The abid said, leaning down from his saddle to bring his face closer to the grating. "Take him in or send him to the grave, I care not. Just make your decision before the caretaker closes the cemetery gates for the night.  De Croix will pay, whatever you decide."

"I am very busy," the physician said.  "You fellows keep sending me patients."

"Then your purse is full, physician, and you have little need for more coin.   We'll take him to the cemetery."

"No, no, I might as well look at him as he's here, even if it is a hopeless case," the physician said without a great deal of enthusiasm.

The hatch closed on us but it was only a moment before the narrow door opened and we were ushered through by a spare man clad in a white robe and a nice, tight turban.   It was not before time too.   I could not have held up my end of the board for much longer.  So cramped were my fingers that my hands were like a crone's when we eventually settled it down on an examination table in the shade of the leafy and pleasant courtyard.

An attendant left to hold the abids' horses and we were ushered to one side while the physician carried out his examination.   He did not seem pleased and shook his head at the sight of the pooled fluids at lay beneath the poor soul's ears.

Whilst the examination took place, I, like the others, took the opportunity to look about us.   The physician's courtyard was more of a physic garden.  It was a complete contrast to grimy, drab brown of the bagnio.   All was clean, swept, white or green.   I could hear the gentle tinkling of water from a fountain and I could also hear something else.   Something familiar shouted from a quarterdeck I once stood before.   It was distant, and sounded like it came from a room nearby, but it was unmistakable.

"Get a fucking move on!" Solomon Jones' voice cried in anguish.  "I've seen better pieces of beef dressed at Smithfield!"

Of course, the physician's house must have been where all the men punished, dying or injured were taken!  In some respects captains like de Croix were quite enlightened.  By removing the sickly from the bagnio, they kept the risk of gaol fever at bay, and their trained crews in fighting trim.  So, Jones was here, and in some form of discomfort judging by the sound of his cries.  That thought brought a smile to my lips and I craved to know more.

Glancing at Jack and Ramsbottom, it was clear that they were as startled as I but there was little we could do to investigate.  The abid were not keen on prisoners chatting in their presence, and there was no way for us to leave the courtyard without being stopped.  All we could do was stand and wait.

I looked back at the physician who was still bent over his work.   "Barbarian!" he muttered but whether he meant the abid, Jones or the one responsible for the wounds inflicted on his patient I could not say.  The shake of his head spurred me.  The beginning of an idea formed in my head.  A mad impulse born of frustration and a selfish desire to spend a little longer in these cool environs spurred me on.

"Lord physician," I called out, drawing on my incomplete knowledge of anatomy, "he has a depressed fracture of the upper right frontal bone.  We were in the quarry and a hammerhead flew from its handle and struck him.  This happened about one half hour ago."

My utterance caused the physician to pause his examination.   He looked up at me, a quizzical look upon his brow.

"You have knowledge of physick?" he asked at last.

Memories from my past crowded into my thoughts; of MacPhail and the Betsy; Morgan and the clyster; the sickbay and the taking of the Resolve; letting blood and discussions on the merits of  Harvey and Galen; giggling  with friends at a book depicting coitus; anatomy at Oxford and spilt wine across a page of dissection notes. It was surprising what I knew.   Nodding my head, I took my chance.

"I have knowledge, Lord. My name is West, Doctor Matthew West, lately surgeon of His Majesty's Ship Resolve."

Once the lie was spoken, it proved easy to continue with the falsehood and my tongue took wing, "I took the liberty of examining the patient on the way here.  It is clear to me that he must be trepanned if he has any hope of survival."

An assiduous reader of my memoirs might be forgiven for doubting my ability to diagnose a treatment, since he has principally only seen me in the capacity as a sot or a fool to fortune.   It would be a fair assumption but I would counter that the diagnosis was a simple matter for a man who has held a human skull in his hands.  After all, our patient had been hit on the head with a hammer.   He was hardly likely to have broken his leg.

How did I know of trepanning?  The day I had perused Von Gersdorff's works at the Bodleian with my friends from The King's Arms, I could not forget.  There had been four of us, Nathaniel being one.  Our nervous laughter and insistent protestations from other readers to be quiet had greeted the Feldbuch der Wundarzney as we opened up the cracked leather cover.  Not having German, we had only been able to caress the woodcuts with horrid fascination.  Every wound from battle was depicted, and every treatment.  Amputations, bone setting, cauterizations and dissections were all present in grotesque detail.  The trepanned man with tongue protruding had struck me as particularly notable.   I had wondered what I had done to deserve such impertinence, and from a German to boot.   It is surprising what fancies spring to one's mind on such occasions.  

The physician looked up at the sky, nodded to himself and then walked to the fountain where a basin of water awaited him.   He washed his hands and dried them on a white cloth before returning to his patient, his hands clasped behind his back.   Without looking at me, he spoke.   "What you say is very interesting.  This poor soul does have a wound as you describe.  Normally, I would bathe the injury with wine mixed with oil of rose, close the flap with sutures and bind the head.   If he survived through the night then I might be confident that he would live but it is most likely that he would return to God."

He walked over to the abid who sat near the fountain and conducted a discussion with them that I could not hear over the sound of the falling water.    The abid appeared not to be pleased with what was said, but I did catch mention of de Croix's name by the physician which in a matter of moments resolved things, the abid agreeing with some reluctance.   Their agreement also seemed to indicate the end of our visit to the physician's house, since they strode over and angrily began shoving us towards the street door.

Hassan stumbled and I bent to aid him, at which one of our hounds snarled at me, "Leave him, dog! You're to stay here! We'll be back for you in the morning!"

The physician came and stood by me whilst he watched the others leave and his attendant return from holding the horses.  Once the door was closed on the hubbub of the street beyond and the shouting abid, he spoke.

"I did not want to speak in front of those...desert trash, but I am very glad to meet a fellow scholar.  By heavens, it would please me greatly to discuss my art with someone other than a mute," at which he nodded at his servant.  "I cannot think that I have ever met a physician from the lands of the infidel. Where are you from?"

It was most agreeable to be sat in the cool shade of the physician's courtyard away from my life of brutality and graft, if only for a moment.   I was at my ease and I should have known better for a life of relaxation was ever denied me.

"England, Lord," I said.   "England, and it is nigh on six months since I have seen my dear father, peace be upon him."

Mistaking my skill at Arabic for shared belief, the physician smiled.  "Well, you must know that the English are Satan's own unbelievers.   It is good that you have found yourself in a land of the true faith.  You may yet find paradise."  He winked, slapped his thighs and grinned.  "But first you must tell me more of how you English prepare a patient for trepanning.  Then we will eat!"

He got up and returned to the patient and put his ear to his chest, his hand on the man's belly, watching it rise and fall.  With his back to me he spoke again.

"It will be such a pleasure to conduct a surgery with a fellow physician.  I haven't trepanned anyone in years.   There is nothing like gazing upon a man's brains to remind one of the perfection of God."

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Thanks also to justanothertune.com for the excerpt from the 1654 Irish ballad Neighbours Farewell to his Friends.