The Chief Of
The Party Undertook To Conduct Them To The Water-Port, When, Coming In
Contact With Another Party, A Conflict About Booty Ensued, During Which
The Consul's Family Got Out Of The Town To A Place Of Comparative
Security.
Incidents of a similar alarming nature attended the escape of Mr.
Robertson, his wife, and four children; one, a baby in arms.
In the
crowd, Mr. Robertson, with a child in each hand, lost sight of Mrs.
Robertson, with her infant and another child. Distracted by sad
forebodings, poor Mr. Robertson forced his way to the water-port, but
not before a savage mountainer - riding furiously by him - aimed a
sabre-blow at him to cut him down; but, as the murderous arm was poised
above, Mr. Robertson stooped, and, raising his arm at the time, warded
it off; the miscreant then rode off, being satisfied at this cut at the
detested Nazarene.
Another ruffian seized one of his little girls, a pretty child of nine
years old, and scratched her arm several times with his dagger, calling
out _flous_ (money) at each stroke. At the water-port, Mr. Robertson
joined his fainting wife, and the British Consul and his wife, with Mr.
Lucas and Mr. Allnut. An old Moor never deserted the Consul's family,
"faithful among the faithless;" and a Jewess, much attached to the
family, abandoned them only to return to those allied to her by the ties
of blood.
Their situation was now still perilous, for, should they be discovered
by the wild Berbers, they all might be murdered.
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