The sharp cries of sea-gulls and sea-mews scarcely rose above the thundering noise of the sea in its fury, as it rushed into the channel which it was necessary to cross in order to enter the road of Tolari.
A few wretched-looking fishermen’s huts, built on the beach where their dried boats were moored, completed the wild and solitary scene. Tossed by this heavy swell, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, sometimes rising on the waves, would strain her cables almost to breaking, and sometimes seemed to sink into a bed between two billows.
Nothing could be severer or more funereal than the aspect of this galley painted like a cenotaph.
A hundred and sixty-six feet long, eighteen feet wide, narrow, slender, and scarcely rising above the level of the sea, she resembled an immense black serpent, sleeping in the midst of the waves. In front of the parallelogram which constituted the body of the galley, was scarfed a sharp and projecting beak-head, six feet in length.
At the rear of the same parallelogram was a rounded stern, the roof of which inclined toward the prow.
Under this shelter, called the stem carriage, lodged the commander, the patron, the prior, and the king of the chevaliers of Malta.
The masts of the galley, hauled down at its entrance into harbour, had been placed in the waist, a narrow passage which ran through the entire length of the galley.
On each side of this passage were ranged the benches of the galley-slaves. Below the stem carriage, attached to a black staff, floated the standard of religion, red, quartered with white, and below the standard a bronze beacon designated the grade of the commander.
It would be difficult, in our day, to comprehend how these slaves, composing the crew of a galley, could live, chained night and day to their benches,—at sea, lying on deck without shelter; at anchor, lying under a tent of coarse, woollen stuff, which scarcely protected them from the rain and the frost.
Let one picture to himself about one hundred and thirty Moorish, Turk, or Christian galley-slaves, dressed in red jackets and brown woollen hooded mantles, on this black galley, in cold, gloomy weather.