eams
were scarcely visible, the whole forming apparently one entire piece of
timber.

The process of building a gallivat was thus a very long and tedious one;
but the vessel when completed was so strong that it could go to sea for
many years before the hull needed repair.

Desmond learned all this only gradually; but from the first day, making a
virtue of necessity, he threw himself into the work and became very
useful, winning the good opinion of the officers of the dockyard. His
feelings were frequently wrung by the brutal punishments inflicted by the
overseer upon defaulters. The man had absolute power over the workers. He
could flog them, starve them, even cut off their ears and noses. One of
his favorite devices was to tie a quantity of oiled cotton round each of
a man's fingers and set light to these living torches.

Another, used with a man whom he considered lazy, was the tank. Between
the dockyard and the river, separated from the latter only by a thin
wall, was a square cavity about seven feet deep covered with boarding, in
the center of which was a circular hole. In the wall was a small orifice
through which water could be let in from the river, while in the opposite
wall was the pipe and spout of a small hand pump. The man whom the
overseer regarded as an idler was let down into the tank, the covering
replaced, and water allowed to enter from the river. This was a potent
spur to the defaulter's activity, for if he did not work the pump fast
enough the water would gradually rise in the tank, and he would drown.
Desmond learned of one case where the man, utterly worn out by his life
of alternate toil and punishment, refused to work the pump and stood in
silent indifference while the water mounted inch by inch until it covered
his head and ended his woes.

Desmond's diligence in the dockyard pleased the overseer, whose name was
Govinda, and he was by and by employed on lighter tasks which took him
sometimes into the town. Until the novelty wore off he felt a lively
interest in the scenes that met his eye--the bazaars, crowded with
dark-skinned natives, the men mustachioed, clad for the most part in
white garments that covered them from the crown of the head to the knee,
with a touch of red sometimes in their turbans; the women with bare heads
and arms and feet, garbed in red and blue; the gosains, mendicants with
matted hair and unspeakable filth; the women who fried chapatis {small,
flat, unleavened cake