retinues belonging to the great personages. Midway between the
two decks were the human engines that propelled the unwieldy craft.
Twenty-five benches ran down along the starboard side and the larboard,
and from each bench a great oar or sweep projected into the water. To
each bench were chained three luckless slaves--seventy-five down each
side, and a hundred and fifty in all. The benches were intended for
four rowers apiece, and could at a pinch accommodate five. The supply
of able-bodied prisoners was small, and the Indians refused to
undertake the work at a wage, so three men were compelled to manage
oars that were a heavy tax on the strength of four. There was a slight
compensation in this--the three had room to lie more comfortably at
night-time. Between the two lines of benches ran a narrow raised
platform, and along this two boatswains walked, whip in hand, to keep
the rowers up to their work, and to visit severely any attempt at
shirking the forced duties of their unhappy position. About a score of
the slaves were white men: there were two Englishmen besides the five
from the _Golden Boar_, the rest being Spaniards or Portuguese
convicted of some crime; but the majority of the rowers were Indians,
who on some pretext or other had been enslaved and sent in chains to
the oars.

The company were all aboard; some in satins and velvets, in glistening
armour; some in modest fustian; and as many in nothing but a dirty
waist-cloth. The guns from the castle roared out; those of the galley
spoke in answer. The trumpeters blew a fanfare; the chief boatswain
sounded his whistle; there was a simultaneous crack of two long,
cowhide whips, and the human machine in the waist of the galley began
its rhythmic work that put life and motion into the vessel.

At number three oar on the starboard side Morgan and Jeffreys tugged,
and a Spaniard sat between them. In a line with them were the three
sailors of Captain Drake's crew, and at benches numbers one and two
larboard and starboard Europeans slaved. Behind them streamed brown
lines of meek-faced Indians. In the ordering of his rowers, the
Spanish captain did not forget those whose skins were of the same hue
as his own, and he spared himself and them the degradation of toiling
and suffering side by side with the inferior race; the white men had
the fore-part of the benches to themselves. All were stripped to the
waist; that was necessary down in the stifling den: mor