So it came to pass that Orm was the first of them who was able to understand what was being said to them, and the only one who could speak a word or two in reply. The consequence was that he became his companions' spokesman and interpreter, and that all orders were addressed to him. He was, besides, able to discover many things for the others by asking questions, as well as he could, of such of the other slaves as spoke Arabic and were able to tell him what he wanted to know. Thus, though he was the youngest of the Northmen, and a slave as they were, he came to regard himself as their chieftain, for neither Krok nor Toke was able to learn a word of the strange language; and Orm always afterwards used to say that, after good luck, strength, and skill at arms, nothing was so useful to a man who found himself among foreigners as the ability to learn a language.
The ship was manned by fifty soldiers, and the galley slaves numbered seventy-two; for there were eighteen pairs of oars. From bench to bench they would often murmur of the possibility of working themselves free from their chains, overpowering the soldiers, and so winning their freedom; but the chains were strong and were carefully watched, and guards were always posted when the ship was lying at anchor. Even when they engaged an enemy ship, some of the soldiers were always detailed to keep an eye on the slaves, with orders to kill any who showed signs of restlessness. When they were led ashore in any of the Caliph’s great military harbors, they were shut up in a slave-house until the ship was ready to depart again, being kept all the time under strict surveillance, and were never allowed to be together in large numbers; so that there seemed to be no future for them but to row for as long as life remained in their bodies, or until some enemy ship might chance to conquer their own and set them at liberty. But the Caliph’s ships were many, and always outnumbered their enemies, so that this eventuality was scarcely to be reckoned with. Such of them as showed themselves refractory, or relieved their hatred with curses, were flogged to death or thrown overboard alive; though occasionally, when the culprit was a strong oarsman, he was merely castrated and set again to his oar, which, though the slaves were never permitted a woman, they held to be the worst punishment of all.
When, in his old age, Orm used to tell of his years as a galley slave, he still remembered all the positions that his fellow Vikings occupied in the ship, as well as those of most of the other slaves; and as he told his story, he would take his listeners from oar to oar, describing what sort of man sat at each, and which among them died, and how others came to take their places, and which of them received the most whippings. He said that it was not difficult for him to remember these things, for in his dreams he often returned to the slave-ship and saw the wealed backs straining before his eyes and heard the men groaning with the terrible labor of their rowing, and, always, the feet of the overseer approaching behind him. His bed needed all the good craftsmanship that had gone into its making to keep it from splitting asunder as he would grip one of its beams to heave at the oar of his sleep; and he often said that there was no happiness in the world to compare with that of awakening from such a dream and finding it to be only a dream.
Three oars in front of Orm, also on the larboard side, sat Krok; and he was now a much changed man. Orm and the others knew that being a galley slave fell harder on him than on the rest of them, because he was a man accustomed to command, and one who had always believed himself to be lucky. He was very silent, seldom replying when his neighbors addressed him; and though, with his great strength, he found no difficulty in doing the work required of him, he rowed always as though half asleep and deep in reflection on other matters. His stroke would gradually become slower, and his oar would fall out of time, and he would be savagely lashed by the overseer; but none of them ever heard him utter any cry as he received his punishment, or even mumble a curse. He would pull hard on his oar and take up the stroke again; but his gaze would follow the overseer’s back thoughtfully as the latter moved forward, as a man watches a troublesome wasp that he cannot lay his hands on.
Krok shared his oar with a man called Gunne, who complained loudly of the many whippings he received on Krok’s account; but Krok paid little heed to his lamentations. At length, on one occasion when the overseer had flogged them both cruelly and Gunne’s complaints were louder and his resentment greater than usual, Krok turned his eyes toward him, as though noticing his presence for the first time, and said: “Be patient, Gunne. You will not have to endure my company for much longer. I am a chieftain and was not born to serve other men; but I have one task yet to accomplish, if only my luck will stretch sufficiently to allow me to do what I have to do.”
He said no more, and what task it was that he had to perform, Gunne could not wring from him.
Just in front of Orm there sat two men named Halle and ögmund. They spoke often of the good days that they had spent in the past, of the food and the ale and the fine girls at home in the north, and conjured up various fitting deaths for the overseer; but they could never think of a way to bring any of them about. Orm himself was seated with a dark-brown foreigner who, for some misdemeanor, had had his tongue cut out. He was a good oarsman and seldom needed the whip, but Orm would have preferred to be next to one of his own countrymen, or at any rate somebody able to talk. The worst of it, as far as Orm was concerned, was that the tongueless man, though unable to talk, was able all the more to cough, and his cough was more frightful than any that Orm had ever heard; when he coughed, he became gray in the face and gulped like a landed fish, and altogether wore such a wretched and woebegone appearance that it seemed impossible that he could live much longer. This made Orm anxious concerning his own health. He did not prize the life of a galley slave very highly, but he was unwilling to be carried off by a cough; the tongueless man’s performance made him certain in his mind of that. The more he reflected on the possibility of his dying like this, the more it dejected his spirits, and he wished that Toke had been seated nearer to him.
Toke was placed several oars behind Orm, so that they seldom had a chance to speak to each other—only, indeed, while they were being led ashore or back to the ship; for in the slave-house they were tethered together in groups of four in tiny cells, according to their places in the ship. Toke had by now regained something of his former humor and could still manage to find something to laugh at, though he was usually at loggerheads with the man who shared his oar, whose name was Tume and who, in Toke’s view, did less than his share of the rowing and ate more than his share of the rations. Toke composed abusive lampoons, some about Tume and some about the overseer, and sang them as chanteys while he rowed, so that Orm and the others could hear them.
Most of the time, however, he occupied his thoughts with trying to plan some method of escape. The first time that Orm and he had a chance to speak to each other, he whispered that he had a good plan almost worked out. All he needed was a small bit of iron. With this he could prize open one of the links in his ankle-chain one dark night when the ship was in port and everybody except the watchmen would be asleep. Having done this, he would pass the iron on to the other Vikings, each of whom would quietly break his chain. When they had all freed themselves, they would throttle the watchmen in the dark, without making a noise, and steal their weapons; then, once ashore, they would be able to fend for themselves.