"Granted! granted!" replied the Spaniard. "I meant no offence to you; but you will see that if anything goes wrong at this oar, yonder villain will visit my back with his whip. He always does so."
"I'll do my best to keep the whip from all of us," answered the Englishman. He bent his back to the shameful work, and felt, in the bitterness of his degradation, something less than human. The thoughts that surged through his brain are too pitiful to be set down here. Chained down in a filthy den, liable to be whipped like a beast of burden, fed upon stuff that was but one remove from offal—how horrible! And he could not forget that about a year before he had stood in the court of his sovereign, proud, happy, praised; great men shook him familiarly by the hand, and a winsome maiden smiled upon him. Now he was a chained slave, doomed to work, eat, and sleep on a narrow plank for ten long years. Ten years! could he survive ten days of the horror and squalor and degradation?
The morning wore on. The upper decks were radiant with sunshine, cool with fresh breezes, and gay with laughter. The hold steamed like an oven, stank most offensively, and groaned with anguish. The rowers began to feel the strain, and the captain ordered the broad, lateen sails to be set on both masts. The breeze was well behind, the galley under good way, and for half an hour or so the sweeps were ordered in, and the slaves fed with a lump of coarse biscuit and refreshed with a pannikin of tepid water. Morgan and Jeffreys sat and talked quietly, and called out a cheery word to the three sailors, whose British hearts were bursting with shame and anger.
In the heat of noon the breeze dropped, and the oars were set vigorously to work again. His excellency wanted quicker progress to be made, so the boatswains commenced to chant a rude song as they walked up and down, and called on the rowers to keep time to the swing of the tune. The fellows did their best, and some of the Spanish slaves joined in the chorus. The song, poor as it was heartened them a little; but the spurt did not last long and the singing ceased. The boatswains used other means. Sometimes it was a sharp word or an angry oath, at others a crack of the whip in the air; too often the thong came down with a cruel cut on bare flesh, and there was a cry or an oath from the victim and a frantic tugging at the great oar.
Thus the day wore on; long spells of rowing, short periods of rest; and all the while the slaves grew fainter and yet fainter in their horrible workroom, and the lash of the whips resounded the more often. Hernando was lashed twice, for no real reason that his companions could discover. The second blow curled across the muscle of his arm and benumbed it for a while, and Johnnie whispered him to move in rhythm with them, whilst he and Jeffreys did the actual rowing. The fellow was grateful, and vowed by the Virgin never to forget the kindness.
The late afternoon brought the governor to his first place of call. Rowing ceased; the anchor was dropped, and the slaves were given their supper of biscuit, a scrap of meat, and a pannikin of water just coloured with wine—this last was a special gift from the governor. Then, wearied and aching, they curled up like tired dogs on the benches, adjusted their chains so as to relieve themselves of as much weight as possible, and fell asleep.
Chapter XLVII.
HERNANDO SPEAKS.
The governor's progress lasted about five weeks. The galley sometimes lay at anchor for several days, and on these occasions the slaves went ashore for a time in chained gangs for the sake of the fresh air and the walking exercise; but they spent the greater part of the day chained to the benches, and always slept on them at night. At one place there had been some insubordination amongst the garrison, so the governor paraded the whole of his gaunt, dishevelled, whip-scarred crew through the town, in order to impress the disloyal ones with the power and terror of the law.