The forecastle-piece was double-shotted and cleared away for action; while the boatswain and his mates flew from stem to stern, lashing unmercifully the bare shoulders of the slaves, with as little remorse as one would the flanks of a vicious horse. Tremendous curses and horrible blasphemies followed this application of the rattans, and the unhappy wretches toiled until their swarthy skins were deluged in perspiration, which mingled with the blood streaming from their lacerated backs. The storm of maledictions soon died away, their exhausted strength requiring that they should work in silence; and I looked on, in pity and disgust, while the miserable beings toiled at the ponderous oars, with measured action which strained every muscle to its utmost power of tension. On glancing along the rows of black-browed, unshaven, and lowering visages, I read one expression in them all—a fearful one! Of what demoniac minds were those stern eyes the index! A thirst for vengeance, rather than for freedom, animated their savage Italian hearts: every bosom was a hell of pent-up passion; every man a chained fiend. The sweeps were moved by each gang rising simultaneously from their bench, and then resuming the sitting position; again rising, and again sitting, without a moment’s respite from toil; and if any man failed to exert himself sufficiently, every slave at that particular sweep received the same number of blows as the delinquent. Such, Guevarra informed me, was the unjust rule in his Majesty’s galleys. One poor wretch dropped dead; and while a shower of blows was distributed to his four comrades, to make them work harder, the iron-hearted boatswain, unlocked with a master-key the padlock which held the chain, and the body was flung into the deep. Many a glance of envy followed it, as it disappeared beneath the bright green water; and once more groans of grief and growls of smothered rage broke forth: but, though the slaves toiled on till the galley seemed to fly through the water, the little scampavia still kept ahead of her. "Work! work! or beware the scurlada," cried the boatswain, who now flourished a gigantic whip, beneath the whisk of which every slave cowered instinctively. "Ahi, Frà Maso, different work this from mumbling latin at Palermo," he cried, bestowing a burning lash on the back of one who had been a priest; "work, work, sloths, if you wish not your hides flayed off. Ola! you, there, with the nose like Ovid, and face like the O of Giotto, dost think thou art selling paste buckles at Messina once more? Bend to the oar Maestro Naso, or feel that!" A yell burst from the unhappy Israelite, as the terrible lash ploughed up his tender skin, while the task-master continued:—"Work, work! pull away larboard and starboard: give way, my beauties, if you would have life left you to behold the sun set. Bravo, my merry little devil at the bow-oar; you seem a very Cicero, and look as if born with the sweep in your hand."