"THE SECRETARY WAS OCCUPIED IN LEADING HER OWN."
CHAPTER VII
THE GALLEY
In all history there have been few more lamentable sights than that of the great and glorious Prince Rupert toiling as a common slave on the row-bank of that Spanish galley. It is true that the Spaniards knew nothing of his rank and position, though their doltishness is proved by their not surmising it from his grand manner and his carriage. But the fact remains that they never so much as guessed at his quality, even when the Holy Office condemned him to the flames as a heretic, and it was his firm command to Stephen Laughan, his secretary and companion in misfortune, that the incognito should be strictly preserved.
"They take me for an English buccaneer," he said, "and I am content with it. I'd liefer be conscience-free as a slave, than Governor of all the Spanish Colonies on the Main and have to kow-tow to their crafty priests. Moreover, Stephen lad, when I throw back on to the oar-loom, I'm minded that they've left us the use of our limbs, and that's more than might have been. They're clever devils with their torturings, and I'd rather work through life sound as a galley-slave, than sit crippled even in a palace."
So it will be seen that even in this terrible adversity—and on all hands it will be admitted that the galleys is one of the worst of fates—the Prince carried a high spirit: indeed the secretary would not be sure that he did not find some entertainment in the adventure.
The hurry of going on board had been great. Wick and his buccaneers had appeared off the port in two ships with brooms at their mastheads to show that they had cleared the seas, and empty sacks at their yard-arms to hint that they were bent on plunder. Wick it seems had caught a boat load of Spaniards, and had sent them ashore packed with saucy messages which filled the Captain of the Port with rage and fright in equal portions. If Wick had sailed in when he first came up, he would have found the town of La Vela (which is the port of Coro City) practically undefended. But the Spaniards, after their idolatrous fashion thanked many saints that the buccaneers wasted much time in bombast and cautious reconnoitring, and sent for troops from Coro with which they manned La Vela ramparts and batteries, and which they also set on the four galleys which rolled at their moorings in the harbour.
For the motive power of these galleys, slaves of all descriptions were pressed into service and chained to the benches. Not one in six of these wretches had been to sea before, and the odd five were smitten with seasickness before they had barely settled to their work. But the whips of the boatswains who walked up and down the centre gang-plank were a fine restorative to the feebled minded, and, as the event showed, the slaves were quicker to get over their malady than were the soldiers who partook of no such harsh medicine, and who were put on board to form the fighting element.
The horrors of that first night at sea are well-nigh unspeakable. Wick's ships had drawn off late in the afternoon, and the galleys, so soon as they were manned, put to sea in inglorious pursuit. As a commencement, the slaves had been chained by ankle-cuffs to traverse-bars which run beneath the seat just in the order in which they chanced to come aboard, and as a consequence, though one oar here and there might be passably handled, the great majority were strained at by wretches who knew no trace of rower's craft, and had little stomach just then to learn it. The Spaniards, according to their brutal fashion, thought to teach skill by the sheer lustiness of their whippings; but these gave little real education, and presently when the galley began to swing to the choppy swells of the Caribbean outside La Vela's protection, the confusion ended in first one, then another, and then others of the sweeps losing a blade, till she bade fair to be completely unrigged if they kept her without change of arrangement.