on the oar-handles, that many would gladly have fallen asleep as they
were--but the order came not. All were kept at their posts ready for the
salute when the guests of the Duke should come on board--that is, the
lifting of the huge oars out of the water all in a moment and holding
them parallel and dripping, a thing which, when well performed, produces
a very happy effect.

After dinner the Duke conducted his guests upon the _coursier_, or
raised platform, to look down upon the strange and terrible spectacle
beneath. It was full moon, and the guests, among them several ladies,
gazed upon that mass of weary humanity as on a spectacle.

"God who made us all," murmured the Abbe John, "can woman born of woman
be so cruel?"

The young Duke was laughing and talking to a lady whom he held
cavalierly by the hand, to preserve her from slipping upon the narrow
ledge of the _coursier_.

"I told you I had the secret of sleep," he said; "I will prove it. I
will make three hundred and fifty men sleep with a motion of my hand."

He signed to one of the "comites," whom he was accustomed to call his
"chief hangman," and the man blew a long modulated note. Instantly the
whole of the men who had kept at attention dropped asleep--most of them
being really so, because of their weariness. And others, like John
d'Albret and Francis the Scot, only pretended to obey the order.

At the sight of the hundreds of miserable wretches beneath, crowded
together, naked to the waist (for they had had no opportunity of
dressing), their backs still bleeding from the blows of the _bourreau_,
the lady shuddered and drew her arm hastily from that of the captain.
But he, thinking that she was pleased, and only in fear of slipping
among such a horrid gang, led her yet farther along the estrade, and
continued his jesting in the same strain as before.

"My dear lady," he said, "you have now seen that I am possessed of the
art of making men sleep. Now you will see that I know equally well how
to awake them."

Again he signed to the "comites" to blow the _reveille_.

A terrible scene ensued as the men rose to resume their oars. The chains
clanked and jingled. The riveted iron girdles about their waists
glistened at the part where the back-pull of the oar catches it. Hardly
one of the crew was fit to move. With the long strain of waiting their
limbs had stiffened; their arms had become like branches of trees. Even
the utmost efforts of "hangman" were hard