_VIII--The Galley (in the hold)._
From his second swoon Tristram awoke to find the light of a lantern
flashing in his face.
The _Merry Maid's_ flag had scarcely been hauled down before night
fell; and almost with its falling, while the men of the other galleys
were helping to clear _L'Heureuse's_ decks, they perceived lights
twinkling off the mouth of the Thames.
At once concluding that these were the lights of English men-of-war
sent to pursue them, they used the utmost dispatch. Their first
concern was to throw the dead overboard and stow the wounded in the
hold. But so closely they were pressed by the fear of losing their
prize and being made prisoners, that it is to be feared as many of
the living were thrown over for dead as of those who were dead in
reality.
This, at any rate, came near to being Tristram's fate. For when the
keeper came to unchain the killed and wounded of his seat he was
still without consciousness lying among the corpses, bathed in their
blood and his own.
"A clean sweep of this bench," said the keeper.
He and his fellows, therefore, without further examination, did but
unchain the slaves and then fling them over. It was sufficient that
the body neither spoke nor cried.
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