“Several regulations occur respecting the seamen’s wages, which show that they were sometimes paid by a share of the freight. On arriving at Bordeaux or any other place, two of the crew might go on shore and take with them one meal of such victuals as were on board, and a proportion of bread, but no drink; and they were to return in sufficient time to prevent their master losing the tide. If a pilot from ignorance or otherwise failed to conduct a ship in safety, and the merchants sustained any damage, he was to make full satisfaction if he had the means to; if not, he was to lose his head; and, if the master or any one of the mariners cut off his head, they were not bound to answer for it; but, before they had recourse to so strong a measure, ‘they must be sure he had not wherewith to make satisfaction.’ “Two articles of the code prove, that from an ‘accursed custom’ in some places, by which the third or fourth part of ships that were lost belonged to the lord of the place--the pilots, to ingratiate themselves with these nobles, ‘like faithless and treacherous villains,’ purposely ran the vessel on the rocks. It was therefore enacted that the said lords, and all others assisting in plundering the wreck, shall be accursed and excommunicated, and punished as robbers and thieves; that ‘all false and treacherous pilots should suffer a most rigorous and merciless death,’ and be suspended to high gibbets near the spot, which gibbets were to remain as an example in succeeding ages. The barbarous lords were to be tied to a post in the middle of their own houses, and, being set on fire at the four corners, all were to be burned together; the walls demolished, its site converted into a marketplace for the sale only of hogs and swine, and all their goods to be confiscated to the use of the aggrieved parties. “Such of the cargoes as floated ashore were to be taken care of for a year or more; and, if not then claimed, they were to be sold by the lord, and the proceeds distributed among the poor, in marriage portions to poor maids and other charitable uses. If, as often happened, ‘people more barbarous, cruel, and inhuman than mad dogs,’ murdered shipwrecked persons, they were to be plunged into the sea till they were half-dead, and then drawn out and stoned to death.”