uard or creates a disturbance between decks
shall be drawn under the keel of the vessel; whoever attempts to draw
weapons on board, be they long or short, shall have the respective
weapon run through his hand into the mast, so that he will have to
draw the weapon through his own hand again if he would free himself;
whoever accuses another unjustly shall pay the double fine prescribed
for the offence charged; and no one shall endeavor to take revenge
upon the executioners. Upon the completion of the voyage the court
resigned, after dispensing a general amnesty and partaking of bread
and salt in company with the rest of the crew. Upon landing, the
monetary fines which had been collected from delinquents on board were
presented to the lord of the strand for benevolent distribution.

On arriving at the end of his journey the merchant was confronted by
new difficulties. It not infrequently happened that the master of the
port visited by him had, within the time elapsed since the departure
of the vessel from home, fallen into strife with the respective Hanse
town whose ensign the vessel bore. As newspapers and despatches were
at that time unknown, it is not difficult to conjecture the
difficulties with which a merchant had to contend. Moreover, he
required an exact knowledge of local conditions and of the legal
rights accorded him, which were different in each city and always
inferior to those of the native inhabitants. To-day, as a rule, a
foreigner, wherever he may be, enjoys the full benefits of the place
he happens to visit, equally with the resident citizen. It was not so
in the days of the Hansa, and hence the constant endeavor of the
league to obtain firmly established offices or bureaus abroad. At an
early date such a bureau existed in London under the name of the
Stahlhof, another at Novgorod under the name of the St. Petershof, and
still others at smaller towns in England and the Netherlands--each
having its peculiar privileges, customs, and mercantile usages, but
all possessing in common the invaluable right of settling any
difficulty affecting the members of the league according to their own
native code. In London the representative of the league was compelled
to become an English citizen, and the entire bureau thus became
naturalized, as it were. The same was true of the Hanse bureau at
Bruges, a city in which after all, in view of the powerful competition
prevailing there, a pronounced monopoly was certain to be