"These fellows," he said, pointing to the other galley slaves, "have for the last year been telling me that I need not call myself an Englishman any more, for that England was only a part of Spain now. I will open their eyes a bit in the morning. But I won't ask you any more questions now; it is a shame to have made you talk so much after such a clip as you have had on the head." Geoffrey turned round on the sand that formed their only bed, and was soon asleep, the last sound he heard being the chuckling of his companion over the discomfiture of the Armada. In the morning the guard came in with a great dish filled with a sort of porridge of coarsely ground grain, boiled with water. In a corner of the yard were a number of calabashes, each composed of half a gourd. The slaves each dipped one of these into the vessel, and so ate their breakfast. Before beginning Geoffrey went to a trough, into which a jet of water was constantly falling from a small pipe, bathed his head and face, and took a long drink. "We may be thankful," the sailor, who had already told him that his name was Stephen Boldero, said, "that someone in the old times laid on that water. If it had not been for that I do not know what we should have done, and a drink of muddy stuff once or twice a day is all we should have got. That there pure water is just the saving of us." "What are we going to do now?" Geoffrey asked. "Does the galley go out every day?" "Bless you, no; sometimes not once a month; only when a sail is made out in sight, and the wind is light enough to give us the chance of capturing her. Sometimes we go out on a cruise for a month at a time; but that is not often. At other times we do the work of the town, mend the roads, sweep up the filth, repair the quays; do anything, in fact, that wants doing. The work, except in the galleys, is not above a man's strength. Some men die under it, because the Spaniards lose heart and turn sullen, and then down comes the whip on their backs, and they break their hearts over it; but a man as does his best, and is cheerful and willing, gets on well enough except in the galleys. "That is work that is. There is a chap walks up and down with a whip, and when they are chasing he lets it fall promiscuous, and even if you are rowing fit to kill yourself you do not escape it; but on shore here if you keep up your spirits things ain't altogether so bad. Now I have got you here to talk to in my own lingo I feel quite a different man. For although I have been here ten years, and can jabber in Spanish, I have never got on with these fellows; as is only natural, seeing that I am an Englishman and know all about their doings in the Spanish Main, and hate them worse than poison. Well, our time is up, so I am off. I do not expect they will make you work till your wounds are healed a bit."