he was born, he was chained to the bench, and in those
chains, let us say at once, he remained, without a single moment's
intermission, for six whole months.

Between himself and the hard timbers of his seat there was naught but a
flimsy and dirty sheepskin. From end to end the bench was not more than
ten feet in length, whilst the distance separating it from the next one
was a bare four feet. In that cramped space of ten feet by four, Sir
Oliver and his six oar-mates had their miserable existence, waking and
sleeping--for they slept in their chains at the oar without sufficient
room in which to lie at stretch.

Anon Sir Oliver became hardened and inured to that unspeakable
existence, that living death of the galley-slave. But that first long
voyage to Naples was ever to remain the most terrible experience of his
life. For spells of six or eight endless hours at a time, and on one
occasion for no less than ten hours, did he pull at his oar without a
single moment's pause. With one foot on the stretcher, the other on
the bench in front of him, grasping his part of that appallingly heavy
fifteen-foot oar, he would bend his back to thrust forward--and upwards
so to clear the shoulders of the groaning, sweating slaves in front of
him--then he would lift the end so as to bring the blade down to the
water, and having gripped he would rise from his seat to throw his full
weight into the pull, and so fall back with clank of chain upon the
groaning bench to swing forward once more, and so on until his senses
reeled, his sight became blurred, his mouth parched and his whole body
a living, straining ache. Then would come the sharp fierce cut of the
boatswain's whip to revive energies that flagged however little, and
sometimes to leave a bleeding stripe upon his naked back.

Thus day in day out, now broiled and blistered by the pitiless southern
sun, now chilled by the night dews whilst he took his cramped and
unrefreshing rest, indescribably filthy and dishevelled, his hair and
beard matted with endless sweat, unwashed save by the rains which
in that season were all too rare, choked almost by the stench of his
miserable comrades and infested by filthy crawling things begotten of
decaying sheepskins and Heaven alone knows what other foulnesses of
that floating hell. He was sparingly fed upon weevilled biscuit and vile
messes of tallowy rice, and to drink he was given luke-warm water that
was often stale, saving that sometimes wh