e midst of a line
of black men and women, many feet resting in the bilge water. There the
Spaniards left me with a jeer, saying that this was too good a bed
for an Englishman to lie on. For a while I endured, then sleep or
insensibility came to my succour, and I sank into oblivion, and so I
must have remained for a day and a night.

When I awoke it was to find the Spaniard to whom I had been sold or
given, standing near me with a lantern and directing the removal of the
fetters from a woman who was chained next to me. She was dead, and in
the light of the lantern I could see that she had been carried off by
some horrible disease that was new to me, but which I afterwards learned
to know by the name of the Black Vomit. Nor was she the only one, for I
counted twenty dead who were dragged out in succession, and I could
see that many more were sick. Also I saw that the Spaniards were not
a little frightened, for they could make nothing of this sickness, and
strove to lessen it by cleansing the hold and letting air into it by
the removal of some planks in the deck above. Had they not done this I
believe that every soul of us must have perished, and I set down my own
escape from the sickness to the fact that the largest opening in the
deck was made directly above my head, so that by standing up, which my
chains allowed me to do, I could breathe air that was almost pure.

Having distributed water and meal cakes, the Spaniards went away. I
drank greedily of the water, but the cakes I could not eat, for they
were mouldy. The sights and sounds around me were so awful that I will
not try to write of them.

And all the while we sweltered in the terrible heat, for the sun pierced
through the deck planking of the vessel, and I could feel by her lack of
motion that we were becalmed and drifting. I stood up, and by resting
my heels upon a rib of the ship and my back against her side, I found
myself in a position whence I could see the feet of the passers-by on
the deck above.

Presently I saw that one of these wore a priest's robe, and guessing
that he must be my companion with whom I had escaped, I strove to
attract his notice, and at length succeeded. So soon as he knew who
it was beneath him, the priest lay down on the deck as though to rest
himself, and we spoke together. He told me, as I had guessed, that we
were becalmed and that a great sickness had taken hold of the ship,
already laying low a third of the crew, adding that