sts. Yet there were others who, in
ordinary eyes, though not in those of their taskmasters, would have
been deemed to be sunk in crimes worse than that of being Huguenots.
No. 512 was a murderer--of his own father; No. 497 had been caught
giving information to England, he being a fisherman, of the
whereabouts of Jean Bart's flotilla; No. 36 had cursed the king and
his family--a truly awful crime; No. 98 had robbed a church, and so
on. But in the eyes of the law, which was the king, or rather the
reformed and married wanton, De Maintenon, none were so vile, none
deserved such bitter punishment and bastinadoing, and rubbing in of
vinegar and salt in their wounds, and starvation, as the pestilential
heretics.

The black spot on the horizon grew larger to the view of the officers
standing aft on the _coursier_, or raised fore-and-aft passage of the
galley, which ran between the larboard and starboard gangs of rowers,
and across which they were hourly stretched to be bastinadoed by their
fellow-slaves, the Turks; and those officers by no means appreciated
the increasing size of that spot. It showed that the English frigate
was overhauling the French galley. The latter, low down in the water
though it was, and with its two sails furled, had been seen by the
former and the pursuit had begun. Fortunate for the galley, and
unfortunate for the miserable slaves whose lives were a curse to them,
if she escaped that frigate now following it so rapidly!

"Row! row!" howled the _comites_, as they rushed up and down the
gangways of the benches, striking the bare backs of the _vogueurs_, or
row-slaves, till they were all crimson with blood. "Row! In time! in
time! Beware, all you," cried one, as bench 12 rowed wildly, while the
lash fell on all their backs in consequence; "will you impede the
galley's course? _Carogne!_" (a common oath), "you wish the accursed
English to take us--foul Protestants like yourselves!"

"Ay," replied one slave on that bench, a man known as 211--"ay. Pray
God they take us or sink us! In the next world we shall not be
chained, nor you free. The chances will be equal."

The lash fell on his back as he spoke, raised a new wheal to keep
company with the others already there, and then the _comite_ passed
on, thrashing and belabouring all the others on his side of the ship,
and howling and bawling and blaspheming at them.

Meanwhile the black spot became a large blur on the blue water; now
her royals were vis