cocher ses chevaux. Pour rendre les coups plus sensible et
pour economiser les vetements, _les galeriens etaient nus_
quand ils ramaient.--ATHANASE COQUEREL FILS. _Les Forcats
pour la Foi_, 64.]

The chain which bound each rower to his bench was fastened to his leg,
and was of such a length as to enable his feet to come and go whilst
rowing. At night, the galley-slave slept where he sat--on the bench on
which he had been rowing all day. There was no room for him to lie
down. He never quitted his bench except for the hospital or the grave;
yet some of the Huguenot rowers contrived to live upon their benches
for thirty or forty years!

During all these years they toiled in their chains in a hell of foul
and disgusting utterance, for they were mixed up with thieves and the
worst of criminals. They ate the bread and drank the waters of
bitterness. They seemed to be forsaken by the world. They had no one
to love them, for most had left their families behind them at home, or
perhaps in convents or prisons. They lived under the constant threats
of their keepers, who lashed them to make them row harder, who lashed
them to make them sit up, or lashed them to make them lie down. The
Chevalier Langeron, captain of _La Palme_, of which Marteilhe was at
first a rower, used to call the _comite_ to him and say, "Go and
refresh the backs of these Huguenots with a salad of strokes of the
whip." For the captain, it seems, "held the most Jesuitical
sentiments," and hated his Huguenot prisoners far worse than his
thieves or his murderers.[49]

[Footnote 49: "The Autobiography of a French Protestant,"
68.]

And yet, at any moment, a word spoken would have made these Huguenots
free. The Catholic priests frequently visited the galleys and
entreated them to become converted. If "converted," and the Huguenots
would only declare that they believed in the miraculous powers of the
clergy, their chains would fall away from their limbs at once; and
they would have been restored to the world, to their families, and to
liberty! And who would not have declared themselves "converted,"
rather than endure these horrible punishments? Yet by far the greater
number of the Huguenots did not. They could not be hypocrites. They
would not lie to God. Rather than do this, they had the heroism--some
will call it the obstinacy--to remain galley-slaves for life!

Many of the galley-slaves did not survive their tortu