“Well, my masters, I was kept here for ten long years, during which I learnt the language, and found that the city in which I dwelt was named Khartoum. Then I began to fall ill; I looked old with suffering, and could not do the tasks allotted to me. I was whipped, and burnt with red-hot irons; but even such cruelties as these did not make me do any more work—for indeed I was more dead than alive,—so at last my master said he would send me down the river to the sea-coast, and sell me there as a galley-slave, as I was of no more use to him, while I should be made to work when I was in the galleys. So, with six others in like condition, I was sent off one morning, in charge of a guard, down the river, passing on our way six waterfalls or cataracts, as also many ruined temples and palaces of great age and beauty, with no men in them.
“After nearly two months of travelling, having passed many towns and villages on the way, we came one morning to a place on the river where we halted; and away in the desert I could see three great buildings, broad and square at the bottom, rising to a great height, and terminating in a point. I asked about them of our captors, and they told me that they were tombs of ancient kings of Egypt, and of great age.
“Leaving these, we went on again, and in course of time came to the city of Alexandria, where our journey ended. We stayed there several weeks, and then I—being by this time recovered from my sickness,—with the other six men, was sold to the captain of a corsair galley, who wanted a few more slaves to make up his complement of rowers.
“And now began the worst years of my life. For six long years, my masters, I sweated in a hot sun, with no shelter; toiling at the great heavy sweeps with the other slaves; always kept to our work by the whip of the bo’sun. Ah, the torment of those years! The recollection of them would never leave me, were I to live to the age of the patriarchs of old. We pursued other craft—mostly merchantmen—and took them; and those of the slaves who were killed by the shot of the other ships were replaced by their crews.
“Many a time did I pray that I should be one of those to find death; but it never came to me, though often enough to the men by my side. At last, one day we attacked a Spanish vessel—for we had gone down towards the Straits of Jebel-al-Tarik—that looked like a harmless merchant-ship, but she proved to be a war-ship disguised on purpose to take us, and others like us. After more than an hour’s fighting, during which nearly all our men were killed, she took us; and I, with the other Englishmen on board the galley, gave thanks to God, for we foolishly thought that all our troubles were now over. But we were soon to find out our mistake. There was now war between England and Spain, and we quickly discovered that we had merely made an exchange of masters.
“We were taken on board the Spaniard and the galley was sunk. Her owners were all hanged, being heathens, but we Englishmen were considered heretics, and we were to be reserved for the Holy Inquisition, that that office might convert us from our sins, and ‘save us from everlasting flame’, as the Spanish Dons put it. We were landed at Cartagena, in Spain, and I, with eight others, was thrown into prison, to await my trial at the hands of the Holy Office. One by one we were tried, and all found guilty of ‘heresy’. Then they asked if we would recant. We all refused, with the natural result that we were put to the torture. Oh, my masters, pray daily and nightly that you may never fall into the hands of the Holy Inquisition! Those years that I spent on the galley were as heaven compared to being in the hands of the Dons.
“I will not tell you how they tortured us—for indeed the story will not bear telling,—but I bear the marks of their irons and the rack to this day. My companions steadfastly refused to renounce their faith, and after enduring the most hideous and awful tortures they were burnt alive. I know not whether my tortures were worse than theirs, but at last I could bear them no longer, and I recanted, to gain release from my daily pain. But I was mistaken in supposing that this late conversion was going to save me. I was tortured again, for my past obstinacy, and then, instead of being released, I was sent to their galleys, to spend the remainder of my life therein. By turning Romanist I had indeed saved myself from burning, but not from that living hell, the life of a galley-slave.
“I was, then, sent to the galleys, and remained there, how long I know not, but it seemed to be several years. During the time that I was in the Spanish galley—for I remained on the same vessel all the time,—we, together with other vessels, made several attacks upon English ships, but we were beaten off with heavy loss in every case except one, and that was when we captured a small English merchantman called the Dainty, the unfortunate crew of which, I suppose, were put into the Inquisition, as I had been. These many conflicts were productive of heavy casualties among the slaves, many more, indeed, than among the soldiers and sailors who composed our fighting-crew, for, when chasing another vessel, or attacking her broadside to broadside, our enemy generally depressed his guns in order to hull and if possible sink us, as in that way only could they prevent us from running alongside. And every shot that pierced a galley’s hull was certain to kill or maim at least four or five slaves. But our masters cared nothing for that; when one crew of galley-slaves was exhausted, another batch was sent for to take their place. There were always plenty of slaves to be had from the Spanish prisons, and the men we got from them were an even more cruel and wicked set of rascals than the men who called themselves our masters.
“Well, I had been a galley-slave among the Spaniards for some years—how many years, exactly, I cannot tell you, for after a time my senses became so deadened that I could not take the trouble to count up and remember the days and weeks as they passed; indeed I became more like an animal than a human being. I had been with the Spaniards for several years, I say, when one day we sighted an English merchantman, as we thought, and chased her. She appeared to be sailing but slowly, and we very soon caught her up, to find that we had walked, or rather sailed, into a deeply-laid trap. The Englishman, it appeared, had adopted a ruse similar to that practised by the Spaniards when they captured the corsair from Alexandria. The English had disguised their vessel—which was a war-ship—to look like an innocent and harmless merchant’s trading-vessel, and to retard her speed and allow us to come up with her they had dropped overboard a couple of light spars connected together by a broad piece of stout sail-cloth, the whole of the apparatus being secured to the stern of the vessel by a stout rope. Thus the passage of the ship through the water caused this piece of canvas between the two spars to open, when it acted as a drag upon her, and reduced her speed so considerably that we soon overtook her. But no sooner were we well under her guns than she opened fire, and before we could get alongside her she had worked fearful execution both among our fighting-crew and also the slaves. Our eyes were now opened to the true character of the vessel, and the crew no longer had any desire to come to close quarters with her; so they put up their helm and bore away with all speed for Cadiz, the port nearest to us.
“And then began a chase that I shall never forget so long as I live, sirs. With our full crew we might perhaps have been a match for the English ship in point of speed, but half our galley-slaves were killed, and the Englishman, having now cut away his drag, was coming up with us hand over hand. The slave-drivers came down among us, and, standing on the drivers’ plank, running down the centre of the galley, drove us to superhuman exertions by the merciless blows of their heavy-thonged whips, the lashes of which were plaited up with small lead balls on them. They even used the flat of their sword-blades to our backs, and after that, when the English ship still continued to overhaul us, they drew the edges of their weapons along our flesh, making the blood spurt. We were, as you perhaps know, all manacled together, and at least half our slaves were killed by the enemy’s shot. The floor of the vessel was ankle-deep in blood, and the corpses of the dead, still manacled to the living—for there was no time to separate us,—kept time with our strokes as we pulled, in a manner most horrible to look upon. The man next me had had his head cut off by a cannon-shot—I remember at the time wishing it had been mine,—and with every stroke I pulled his corpse moved also, and with each movement jets of blood gushed up from the torn veins, which were protruding from the gory neck, and flooded me. Well, the vessel still continued to gain on us, and I saw the Spanish dogs of slave-drivers whispering together, and presently they called for buckets of fire. These were brought, full of glowing charcoal, and into them irons were thrust. The unhappy slaves saw what was in store for them, and pulled until their muscles cracked. Soon the irons were white-hot, and the chief driver called to us in Spanish: ‘We must escape that cursed heretic-ship yonder. Now, you all see these irons? If I see one of you flagging in your efforts, that man will be branded with them, and when we get into harbour will be handed over to the office of the Holy Inquisition as a heretic and an aider and abettor of heretics.’ This cruel threat drove us all nearly mad, and—for we knew what that meant—our muscles cracked again as we laboured on at the oars, hampered as we were by the bloody corpses of our fellow-slaves. For myself, I was away from the centre of the galley, I thank God! and near an open port, so I got a little air, which refreshed me; but I presently saw one of the poor fellows near the middle of the vessel, where the air was stifling, begin to relax his exertions. He was fainting with the heat and fatigue of the chase. The chief slave-driver, whose name, I remember, was Alvarez, saw it too, and called out: ‘Juan, this heretic is fainting; bring the fire-bucket.’