"Well, I had been a galley-slave among the Spaniards for some years--how many years, exactly, I cannot tell you, for after a time my senses became so deadened that I could not take the trouble to count up and remember the days and weeks as they passed; indeed I became more like an animal than a human being. I had been with the Spaniards for several years, I say, when one day we sighted an English merchantman, as we thought, and chased her. She appeared to be sailing but slowly, and we very soon caught her up, to find that we had walked, or rather sailed, into a deeply-laid trap. The Englishman, it appeared, had adopted a ruse similar to that practised by the Spaniards when they captured the corsair from Alexandria. The English had disguised their vessel--which was a war-ship--to look like an innocent and harmless merchant's trading-vessel, and to retard her speed and allow us to come up with her they had dropped overboard a couple of light spars connected together by a broad piece of stout sail-cloth, the whole of the apparatus being secured to the stern of the vessel by a stout rope. Thus the passage of the ship through the water caused this piece of canvas between the two spars to open, when it acted as a drag upon her, and reduced her speed so considerably that we soon overtook her. But no sooner were we well under her guns than she opened fire, and before we could get alongside her she had worked fearful execution both among our fighting-crew and also the slaves. Our eyes were now opened to the true character of the vessel, and the crew no longer had any desire to come to close quarters with her; so they put up their helm and bore away with all speed for Cadiz, the port nearest to us.