So that
it became a quaint dilemma of King Philip's how to obtain sufficient
heretics for his _autos de fe_ without impoverishing too greatly his
marine.

The _Conquistador_ kept close company with the _Puerto Reale_, another
of the same class, but with only two hundred slaves aboard to the three
hundred and fifty of the _Conquistador_. The "comite," or
master-in-charge of the slaves, walked up and down a long central bench.
His whip was hardly ever idle, but it did not fall again upon John
d'Albret--not from any pity for a newcomer, but because the ship's
purser had let out the fact that a considerable sum in gold was in his
hands to the credit of the newcomer. For King Philip, though he
persecuted the heretic with fire and sword, fine, imprisonment, and the
galleys, did not allow his subordinates to interfere with his monopoly.
And indeed, as the Abbe John learned, more than one officer had swung
from the forty-foot yard of his own mainmast for intromitting wrongfully
with a prisoner's money.

As to the captains, they were for the most part impoverished grandees or
younger sons of dukes and marquises. Most were knights of Malta and so
apparent bachelors, whose money would go to the Order at their death. In
the meantime, therefore, they spent royally their revenues. The captain
of the _Conquistador_ was the young Duke of Err, recently succeeded to
the ambassadorial title, and it was said of him that he counted the life
of a galley-slave no more than that of a black-beetle beneath his
seigneurial heel.

So long as the boat remained at sea, there was no sleep for any slave.
Neither, indeed, for any of the "comites" or sub-officers, who
consequently grew snappish and drove their slaves to the very limit of
endurance, so that they might the sooner reach the harbour. Yet it was
full morning before the awnings were spread within the roads of
Barcelona, and the Abbe John could stretch his limbs--so far, that is,
as the chain allowed. He had been placed, at the request of the senior
oarsman of his mess, Francis Agnew, in the easiest place, that next to
the side of the galley. Here not only was the stroke of the oar
shortest, but at night, or in the intervals of sleep, the curve of the
ship's side made a couch, if not luxurious, at least, comparatively
speaking, tolerable.

The "comite" hoisted his hammock across the broad _coursier_ or
_estrada_ which ran the length of the ship, overlooking and separating
the two banks o