Although it was a known sea and a time of peace the slaves were allowed no quarter--that is, one half rowing while the other rested. All were forced most mercilessly through a long day's agony of heat and labour. "Strike, _bourreau_--strike!" cried the captain incessantly; "what else are you paid the King's good money for? If we do not get to Tarragona by four o'clock this afternoon, I will have you hung from the yardarm. So you are warned. If you cannot animate, you can terrorise. Once I saw a 'comite' in the galleys of Malta cut off a slave's arm, and beat the other dogs about the head with it till they doubled their speed!" It was in order to give a certain entertainment at Tarragona that the Duke of Err was so eager to get there. For hardly had the _Conquistador_ anchored, before the great sail was down, the fore-rudder unshipped, the after part of the deck cleared, and a gay marquee spread, with tables set out underneath for a banquet. By this time, what with the freshness of the sea and fear of missing a stroke occasionally--a crime always relentlessly punished--the men were so fatigued with the heat, the toil, and the bruising of their chests upon the oar-handles, that many would gladly have fallen asleep as they were--but the order came not. All were kept at their posts ready for the salute when the guests of the Duke should come on board--that is, the lifting of the huge oars out of the water all in a moment and holding them parallel and dripping, a thing which, when well performed, produces a very happy effect. After dinner the Duke conducted his guests upon the _coursier_, or raised platform, to look down upon the strange and terrible spectacle beneath. It was full moon, and the guests, among them several ladies, gazed upon that mass of weary humanity as on a spectacle. "God who made us all," murmured the Abbé John, "can woman born of woman be so cruel?" The young Duke was laughing and talking to a lady whom he held cavalierly by the hand, to preserve her from slipping upon the narrow ledge of the _coursier_. "I told you I had the secret of sleep," he said; "I will prove it. I will make three hundred and fifty men sleep with a motion of my hand." He signed to one of the "comites," whom he was accustomed to call his "chief hangman," and the man blew a long modulated note. Instantly the whole of the men who had kept at attention dropped asleep--most of them being really so, because of their weariness. And others, like John d'Albret and Francis the Scot, only pretended to obey the order.