[Footnote 75: Sewell's History of the Quakers, pp. 392-397.]
In the current of time other instances occurred. A letter from Algiers, dated August 6, 1772, and preserved in the British Annual Register, furnishes the following story:[76] "A most remarkable escape," it says, "of some Christian prisoners has lately been effected here, which will undoubtedly cause those that have not had that good fortune to be treated with utmost rigor. On the morning of the 27th July, the Dey was informed that all the Christian slaves had escaped the over-night in a galley; this news soon raised him, and, upon inquiry, it was found to have been a preconcerted plan. About ten at night, seventy-four slaves, who had found means to escape from their masters, met in a large square near the gate which opens to the harbor, and, being well armed, they soon forced the guard to submit, and, to prevent their raising the city, confined them all in the powder magazine. They then proceeded to the lower part of the harbor, where they embarked on board a large rowing polacre that was left there for the purpose, and, the tide ebbing out, they fell gently down with it, and passed both the forts. As soon as this was known, three large galleys were ordered out after them, but to no purpose. They returned in three days, with the news of seeing the polacre sail into Barcelona, where the galleys durst not go to attack her."
In the same journal[77] there is a record of another triumph of freedom in a letter from Palma, the capital of Majorca, dated September 3, 1776. "Forty-six captives," it says, "who were employed to draw stones from a quarry some leagues' distance from Algiers, at a place named Genova, resolved, if possible, to recover their liberty, and yesterday took advantage of the idleness and inattention of forty men who were to guard them, and who had laid down their arms, and were rambling about the shore. The captives attacked them with pickaxes and other tools, and made themselves masters of their arms; and, having killed thirty-three of the forty, and eleven of the thirteen sailors who were in the boat which carried the stones, they obliged the rest to jump into the sea. Being then masters of the boat, and armed with twelve muskets, two pistols, and powder, they set sail, and had the good fortune to arrive here this morning, where they are performing quarantine. Sixteen of them are Spaniards, seventeen French, eight Portuguese, three Italian, one a German, and one a Sardinian."