we tugged at the oar. Where
we toiled there we slept, amongst the shrieks, sobs, groans, and
heart-rending lamentations of our fellow-captives. Up and down the
gangways that divided us walked stalwart Spaniards, armed with heavy
whips, which they scarcely ever ceased from laying about our bare
shoulders. Our food was such as is given to pigs in England--coarse
maize or meal, soaked in cold water, with bread of the blackest and
hardest description. The heat burned us to madness; the cold night-winds
blew in upon us; the salt-spray dashing through the open ports found the
raw places in our wounds and stung us as if with fire. Verily, we were
in hell! Ere many days had gone by a man dropped and died at his post.
They let him hang there by his chains till another day had gone past,
then they knocked off his irons and flung him through the port-hole. And
there was scarcely a man of us that did not envy him.

Now that Captain Manuel Nunez had us in his power there was apparently
no limit to his cruelty. Scarcely a day passed on which he did not
descend the ladder to our deck and vex our souls with some new form of
torture. Sometimes he would take his station near us, and bid the
overseers lay on to us with their whips. Sometimes he would take the
whip himself and beat us about the head and face with it until we became
senseless. Now and then he would amuse himself by pricking us with his
sword or dagger; now and then he would spit in our faces and bespatter
us with filth, pouring out upon us every foul and evil name he could
think of. And when he had worked his will upon us, there would come to
us Frey Bartolomeo, cold and cruel, and he would admonish and instruct
us, and finding that he could get naught out of us, would depart cursing
us for Lutherans and dogs.

These two presently devised a new torture, and put it into operation
upon us. They caused the ship's armorer to make an iron brand, bearing
the word "Heretic", and this being heated red, they came down to us and
branded us on back and breast, so that all men, they said, should know
us for what we were. And after that they gave us more lashes, and then
deluged us with salt water, and so left us more dead than alive.

Now, after I had undergone some weeks of this treatment, I was like to
have lost my senses, for the strength of my body was giving out, and I
felt myself powerless to resist the continued cruelties and insults
which were put upon me. Yea, I should cert