"We may be thankful," the sailor, who had already told him that his name was Stephen Boldero, said, "that someone in the old times laid on that water. If it had not been for that I do not know what we should have done, and a drink of muddy stuff once or twice a day is all we should have got. That there pure water is just the saving of us."
"What are we going to do now?" Geoffrey asked. "Does the galley go out every day?"
"Bless you, no; sometimes not once a month; only when a sail is made out in sight, and the wind is light enough to give us the chance of capturing her. Sometimes we go out on a cruise for a month at a time; but that is not often. At other times we do the work of the town, mend the roads, sweep up the filth, repair the quays; do anything, in fact, that wants doing. The work, except in the galleys, is not above a man's strength. Some men die under it, because the Spaniards lose heart and turn sullen, and then down comes the whip on their backs, and they break their hearts over it; but a man as does his best, and is cheerful and willing, gets on well enough except in the galleys.
"That is work; that is. There is a chap walks up and down with a whip, and when they are chasing he lets it fall promiscuous, and even if you are rowing fit to kill yourself you do not escape it; but on shore here if you keep up your spirits things ain't altogether so bad. Now I have got you here to talk to in my own lingo I feel quite a different man. For although I have been here ten years, and can jabber in Spanish, I have never got on with these fellows; as is only natural, seeing that I am an Englishman and know all about their doings in the Spanish Main, and hate them worse than poison. Well, our time is up, so I am off. I do not expect they will make you work till your wounds are healed a bit."
This supposition turned out correct, and for the next week Geoffrey was allowed to remain quietly in the yard when the gang went out to their work. At the end of that time his wound had closed, and being heartily sick of the monotony of his life, he voluntarily fell in by the side of Boldero when the gang was called to work. The overseer was apparently pleased at this evidence of willingness on the part of the young captive, and said something to him in his own tongue. This his companion translated as being an order that he was not to work too hard for the present.
"I am bound to say, mate, that these Moors are, as a rule, much better masters than the Spaniards. I have tried them both, and I would rather be in a Moorish galley than a Spanish one by a long way, except just when they are chasing a ship, and are half wild with excitement. These Moors are not half bad fellows, while it don't seem to me that a Spaniard has got a heart in him. Then again, I do not think they are quite so hard on Englishmen as they are on Spaniards; for they hate the Spaniards because they drove them out of their country. Once or twice I have had a talk with the overseer when he has been in a special good humour, and he knows we hate the Spaniards as much as they do, and that though they call us all Christian dogs, our Christianity ain't a bit like that of the Spaniards. I shall let him know the first chance I have that you are English too, and I shall ask him to let you always work by the side of me."
As Stephen Boldero had foretold, Geoffrey did not find his work on shore oppressively hard. He did his best, and as he and his companion always performed a far larger share of work than that done by any two of the Spaniards, they gained the good-will of their overlooker, who, when a fortnight later the principal bey of the place sent down a request for two slaves to do some rough work in his garden, selected them for the work.
"Now we will just buckle to, lad," Stephen Boldero said. "This bey is the captain of the corsair, and he can make things a deal easier for us if he chooses; so we will not spare ourselves. He had one of the men up there two years ago, and kept him for some months, and the fellow found it so hard when he came back here again that he pined and died off in no time."
A guard took them to the bey's house, which stood on high ground behind the town. The bey came out to examine the men chosen for his work.
"I hear," he said, "that you are both English, and hate the Spaniards as much as we do. Well, if I find you work well, you will be well treated; if not, you will be sent back at once. Now, come with me, and I shall show you what you have to do."