This affair, I make no doubt, has been misrepresented in the world—we have no true histories, but such as have been written by those who were sincere enough to relate what they experienced, in what relates to themselves.
I was seized, and carried to a dungeon until my trial; when, without a hearing, I was condemned for life to be a galley-slave, and sent for that purpose on board the gallies at Marseilles. The labour of a galley-slave, is become a proverb; nor is it without reason that this may be reckoned the greatest fatigue that can be inflicted on wretchedness.
Imagine six men chained to their seats, entirely naked as when born, sitting with one foot on a block of timber fixed to the footstool; the other lifted up against the bench before them, holding in their hands an oar of an enormous size. Imagine them lengthening their bodies, their arms stretched out to push the oar over the backs of those before them; who are also themselves in a similar attitude. Having thus advanced their oar, they raise that end which they hold in their hands, to plunge the opposite in the sea; which done, they throw themselves back upon their benches below, which are somewhat hollowed to receive them. But none but those who have seen them labour can conceive how much they endure: none but such could be persuaded that human strength could sustain the fatigue which they undergo for an hour successively. But what cannot necessity and cruelty make men do? Almost impossibilities. Certainly no galley can be navigated in any other way, than by a crew of slaves, over whom a comite may exercise the most unbounded authority. No free man could continue at the oar an hour unwearied: yet a slave must sometimes lengthen out his toil for ten, twelve, nay, for twenty hours, without the smallest intermission. On these occasions the comites, or some of the other mariners, put into the mouths of those wretches a bit of bread steeped in wine, to prevent their fainting through excess of fatigue or hunger, while their hands are employed upon the oar. At such times are heard nothing but horrid blasphemies, loud bursts of despair, or ejaculations to Heaven; all the slaves streaming with blood, while their unpitying taskmasters mix oaths and threats, and the smacking of whips, to fill up this dreadful harmony.
At this time the captain roars to the comite to redouble his blows; and when any one drops from his oar in a swoon, (which not unfrequently happens) he is whipped while any remains of life appear, and then thrown into the sea, without any farther ceremony. The Diable Boitteux, in order to make Cleofas sensible of the happy condition of an inquisitor, tells him, Was not I a Dæmon, I would be an inquisitor? Were the devil to become a mortal, he would incline to be the comite to the galley-slaves at Marseilles, whose hearts are inlapidated by cruelty.
How these slaves are fed, to enable them to support such enormous toil, may be judged from the following account.—When it was necessary we should take some refreshment, the captain ordered the dogs to their mess. He only meant by this, that we should be served with beans, the usual food allowed us. These are indeed most intolerable eating, and what nothing but the most pinching hunger could dispense with. They are ill boiled, with scarce any oil, a little salt, and all to be eaten out of a capacious cauldron, not the cleanest in the world, as may easily be conceived.
I was never so hungry but that I preferred eating my portion of bread dipped in vinegar and water to this mess, which even offended the sense of smelling. However, these, and twenty-two ounces of biscuit, are all the food allowed for a galley-slave. Each of the crew receives four ounces of this beverage; that is, provided none of it be secreted before it is brought upon deck, which is not unfrequently the case.
I once had the curiosity to count the number of beans which a brother slave had got for all his portion, which amounted to just thirty; and those of the little black bean, commonly called horse-beans. We did not even commiserate one another. To pity, we must be acquainted with the sufferings of our fellow-creatures, but not feel them. When we know by experience what pain is, we pity those who suffer; but when we ourselves are in pain, we then feel only what we ourselves undergo. In every station, subject to the calamities of life, we allow to others that share of our sensibility only which we have no occasion for ourselves. People in ease, people in affluence, may think otherwise, but it is not in nature.
Dreadful as this was, I have always thought death a punishment that was no way adequate to the crimes of some public villains who have been punished with it; and I am certain the most cowardly among men, would prefer it to being a galley-slave. We are condemned to death by nature; the sentence of the law, and the hand of the hangman, only anticipate a few months or days; but to be daily wishing for death, as a friend, to relieve us, and to be debarred of all means of meeting him, is such a quintessence of wretchedness as would, I believe, make all mankind keep a strict guard upon their actions, that they may avoid falling into it.[38]
From this infernal state of existence I was delivered by Mr Worthy, who is a slave-merchant—he saw, and pitied my distress—he had accidentally saved the life of one of the ruffians who had assisted in the attempt to rob my father. This man afterwards, upon his death-bed, acquainted his good master of my situation, who promised to release me. This was effected by his giving a large sum to the captain and the comite. The secret was told me; it was agreed I should pretend to faint, and appear insensible; when I should be thrown into the sea as dead—This happily succeeded.
Nothing can be more unjust than to confine the instance of humanity within the narrow circle of a few European nations. The noble, the generous, the humane dispositions are diffused throughout all nature, and exert their engaging force wherever a body of men subsists. Virtue and vice are mingled in all societies: we have savages in Italy; and there are worthy men amongst those we call savages. Christians do often those things which a modest heathen would blush at, and, while they boast of their religion, are strangers to the common laws of humanity. It should be the boast of a wise man to despise nothing that he is not well acquainted with, and to do justice to all mankind, of whatever country or complexion.—Virtue, like the rays of the sun, shines over the whole habitable globe, enlivens the moral, as that the material world, and exerts its benign influences from the scorching equinox to the frozen poles. We feel its force; all communities are bound together by its magnetic influence; and without it the nations of Barbary would be covered with devastation, and no more inhabited than the scorching sands of its inhospitable deserts.