The drum boomed out over the sweltering gloom of the old galley deck and in
honest response to its relentless cadence, the women galley slaves hauled on their oars in
perfect unison, their strong, sweat slimed bodies rocking back and forth as they drew the
ponderous oar with a splash of sea spray and a hiss as the oars cleaved the water.
Overseers prowled the walkways, with their breasts bared, stripped to just their
loose fitting blue pants, as naked as their lowly charges, they walked up and down between
the rows of slaving women, hurling their thin, leather quirts hard across the bowed back
or offered breasts as a slave hauled her oar back. Whipping any recalcitrant slave they
thought might not be pulling her weight, lashing more red raised welts to marry with the
dozens all of the slaves already wore, so that all over the row-deck, the hiss and slap of
the whip was everywhere.
It was early afternoon and Tufah blinked the sweat from her eyes for the hundredth
time that day and then she took the split second to wipe her eyes with an equally sweaty
arm top. She gasped as she hauled out the next stroke and glanced at her oar-mate.
Immediately she recognised the dull, dumb look on her friend’s face. The dead eyes, the
expressionless countenance that told Tufah that her friend had retreated from the hell of
the row-deck to some other secret world that lived within her. Tufah knew that crawling
into this quiet, personal world was the only way she or any of the other girls survived
the hell of galley servitude. Tufah had her own retreat, every girl had to have her own
place that would be as individual and unique as the girl’s face but would be essential.
Tufah needed such a retreat or risk going mad with the drudgery and sheer brutality of the
life she led. It was a mind state, a sort of dream that the slaves slipped into and could
do so yet still continue to work the oar as before.
In Tufah’s world, she was free again, patrolling the open expanse of desert as she
did when she was a soldier in the women’s desert army. She loved the openness of the
desert. Its vast, limitless expanse, broad and seemingly endless. So unlike the shuttered,
claustrophobic gloom of a galley deck. Many said the desert was a brutal, heartless, but
Tufah did not agree. To her, the desert was honest. Yes it would kill her in a heartbeat
if she did not take the precautions she had been trained to take, but then, the desert
never tried to hide that fact. It was neither friend nor foe; it was just there. So unlike
the masters and merchants, the slavers and dealers she had encountered over the years.
They were tricksters and liars. It was their tricks and lies that had earned her five
years at the oar for smuggling. The men who actually made all the money went free and
unmolested to continue to ply their cheating with the next woman who would inevitably end
where she was now.
This time though the dreaming of her oar-mate was cut short as the quirt flew and
slapped Tufah’s sweating, straining back twice and Tufah grunted as she took the strokes
and then her oar-mate was slashed back into her living hell as two cuts were dealt to her
slaving body too. Tufah realised that the overseer had spotted her oar-mate’s expression
and had quickly worked to flog her back to reality and ensure she kept working at full
pace. The overseers were themselves seasoned veterans of the galley oar. They were time
served oar-meat all of them and so were well versed in the ways and wiles of galley slaves
and they knew as well as any when a girl needed a goad from the whip.
Tufah had worked the oar for fully five years and her early hopes that she might be
one of the few lucky ones and rise from the row-bench to wear the blue trousers and wield
the driving quirt of the slave-driver had long since faded. Tufah could not be too bitter,
only a small percentage of so called wet-backs made their way to rise from the row-bench
to become overseer, but Tufah used to long to be one of the chosen, to walk the gangways
instead of constantly hauling an oar, to be the one dealing out the lashes rather than
feeling them. Then of course there was the limb wrenching, bone crushing drudgery of
loading and unloading the galley when it was in port. That was an onerous task spared the
overseers. Tufah had been sure that becoming an overseer was the answer to her dreams.
Now, that desire had faded with the years, the salt sea spray had washed the desire away,
she had served almost all of her five years slave term and now all she wanted more than
anything else was to be freed of the hellish galley and return to freedom. To feel the
wind in her hair, feel the sun on her face and not be driven or worked by anyone again.
That was her longing now and soon, she would have that, what bliss that was to be.
It was early afternoon and the food detail was complete. The time when the galley
was slowed to the first beat and half the slaves were fed and watered and allowed to
relieve themselves whilst the other half continued to row and then thirty minutes later,
the roles were reversed. How Tufah loved this brief interlude to the day. A chance to rest
wearied, pummelled limbs and stretch tired, stiff legs. She always took the opportunity to
walk to the rear of the galley to relieve herself, even if the urge to go was weak. The
chance to stand and walk on her legs instead of use them as a fulcrum to haul on the oar
was a joy.
Now though, the galley was back to the three quarter rate and Tufah knew that the
hottest time of day was upon them. She dripped sweat and sweat soaked the full, knitted
material of her baggy white pants. The top of the row-deck throbbed with heat as the Sun
heated the upper deck and pressed down on the slaving dogs below. The very boards of the
galley seemed to oppress them with heat and fire.
The drum beat throbbed in her head, a sensation as much as a sound and the great
pounding oars that swayed and swept all around her thudded and cracked in their rowlocks
as they took the strain of the next great sweep, but punctuating all of these sounds was
the snap and flash of the sharp, leather whips that were used to drive and torture
wearied, sweat-soaked bodies. Tufah's body was singing with the latest stripes that
had been seared onto her that day and she knew well enough that there would be as many as
a dozen more visited across her body before she might be able to consider her day
complete. All around her she would glimpse half-naked overseers, wet with sweat themselves
lash new stripes onto old across the straining back of a rower and she would see the whip
fly down as the driver leaned into the strokes she laced on.
Tufah hauled and grunted, gulping great lung-fulls of air as she worked. She was
mindful not to allow her head to drop or roll as she worked, that was a sure invite for
any prowling overseer to lash her back to the reality and hell of the slave galley.
Suddenly, without warning overseers were busying themselves at Tufah’s feet, threading the
chains that ran through the rings about her ankles. She saw one of the day’s deck runners
had been summoned alongside and before she knew it, one of the overseers snapped at her to
stand. Tufah released the heavy oar happily enough and was pleased to rise from the bench.
The luckless deck runner took Tufah’s vacated and sweat-dampened spot and grasped the oar
in her stead and Tufah was pushed back towards the rear of the galley. Momentarily, she
was concerned; this was where the shackles hung from the deck roof and held fast the
slaves on punishment detail that day. Tufah had stood there enough times to know how
savage and sickening a studied flogging of twenty four lashes was and did not relish the
idea of a visit there again, but then she quickly dispelled the concern from her mind.
Punishments were dealt out at the end of the day and besides, no overseer had cursed her
back with hard stripes and announced a flogging at the day’s end for her, she had been
raised from the bench for another reason.
“Up the steps, the Captain has ordered you up!” snapped the overseer and Tufah was
as puzzled as she was stunned. In all her five years she had not once spoken to either of
the two captains that had ruled over the galley and now it seemed the captain herself had
singled her out of the anonymity of the row-deck and ordered her forward. Tufah was
intrigued to know why she had been summoned and on stiff and weary legs, she reached the
bottom of the steps. An overseer pushed past her and shouted at two labouring on their
oar.
“Haul the thing you work shy dogs!” and her exhortation was underlined with two
swingeing stripes apiece to the sweating, straining backs of the oar-mates. Tufah winced,
she had seen it thousands of times and experienced it herself too, but it still stuck in
her throat when it was enacted before her. Perhaps the five years of hell had not
completely killed all she had once been. Tufah took hold of the rail either side of the
steep wooden steps and hauled herself from the booming, stinking, sweltering, gloom of the
row-deck and headed for the blue, sunlit vista above her that she could only ever peek at
through the raised grating either end of the galley as she rowed.
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