Sometimes a galley-slave worked as long as twenty years, sometimes for all his miserable life, at this fearful calling. The poor creatures were chained so close together in their narrow bench--a sharp cut was the characteristic of the galley--that they could not sleep at full length. Sometimes seven men (on French galleys, too, in the last century), had to live and sleep in a space ten feet by four. The whole ship was a sea of hopeless faces. And between the two lines of rowers ran the bridge, and on it stood two boatswains (_comiti_) armed with long whips, which they laid on to the bare backs of the rowers with merciless severity. Furttenbach gives a picture of the two boatswains in grimly humorous verse: how they stand, Beclad, belaced, betrimmed, with many knots bespick; Embroidered, padded, tied; all feathers and all flap; Curly and queued, equipped, curious of hood and cap: and how they "ever stolidly smite" the crew with the bastinado, Or give them a backward prod in the naked flesh as they ply, With the point that pricks like a goad, when "powder and shot" is the cry; in order to send the Turks to Davy's wet locker:-- As John of Austria nipped them and riddled them with ball, As soon as his eyes fell on them, and ducked or slaughtered them all; and how the boatswain's dreaded whistle shrieked through the ship:-- For they hearken to such a blast through all the swish and sweat, Through rattle and rumpus and raps, and the kicks and cuffs that they get, Through the chatter and tread, and the rudder's wash, and the dismal clank Of the shameful chain which forever binds the slave to the bank. To this may be added Captain Pantero Pantera's description of the boatswain's demeanour: "He should appear kindly towards the crew: assist it, pet it, but without undue familiarity; be, in short, its guardian and in some sort its father, remembering that, when all's said, 'tis human flesh, and human flesh in direst misery."