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"I will follow you, if you will give me your word of honour to land me free in Corfu." "I have orders to deliver your person to M. Foscari, on board the bastarda." "Well, you shall not execute your orders this time." "If you do not obey the commands of the general, his honour will compel him to use violence against you, and of course he can do it.
The adjutant consigned me to M. Foscari, assuring me that he would immediately give notice of my arrival to M. D R , send my luggage to his house, and report the success of his expedition to the general. M. Foscari, the commander of the bastarda, treated me very badly. If he had been blessed with any delicacy of feeling, he would not have been in such a hurry to have me put in irons.
On May 30th he embarked in the Royal Galley, the Galera Bastarda, which had been prepared for him by Andrea Doria, his Captain-General of the Galleys. This vessel seems to have somewhat resembled the barge of Cleopatra in the magnificence of its appointments, as its interior was gilded, and it was fitted up with all the luxury that could be devised at this period.
I had been in the coffee-house for half an hour when the general's adjutant came to tell me that his excellency ordered me to put myself under arrest on board the bastarda, a galley on which the prisoners had their legs in irons like galley slaves. The dose was rather too strong to be swallowed, and I did not feel disposed to submit to it. "Very good, adjutant," I replied, "it shall be done."
My janissaries, to whom I gave a week's pay, insisted upon escorting me, fully equipped, as far as the boat, which made the adjutant laugh all the way. We reached Corfu by eight o'clock in the morning, and we went alongside the 'bastarda.
Perhaps that which strikes the modern seaman most in this recital of all the useless matters with which the vessels of the great were burdened at this period is the extraordinary number of flags and banners with which they went to sea. The catalogue of those in the Galera Bastarda makes one rather wonder how there was room for anything else of more practical usefulness when it came to fighting.
You have disobeyed the order I brought you to go to the 'bastarda; in that you have acted wrongly, and in that alone, for in every other respect you were perfectly right, the general himself says so." "Then I ought to have put myself under arrest?" "Certainly; obedience is necessary in our profession." "Would you have obeyed, if you had been in my place?"
I had, as a matter of course, to engross all conversation, and to give the fullest particulars of all that had taken place from the moment I received the order to place myself under arrest up to the time of my release from the 'bastarda'. M. Foscari was seated next to me, and the last part of my narrative was not, I suppose, particularly agreeable to him.
The adjutant consigned me to M. Foscari, assuring me that he would immediately give notice of my arrival to M. D R , send my luggage to his house, and report the success of his expedition to the general. M. Foscari, the commander of the bastarda, treated me very badly. If he had been blessed with any delicacy of feeling, he would not have been in such a hurry to have me put in irons.
"You may go alone, if you like; but I will not leave this place until I have the certainty, not only that I shall not be sent to the 'bastarda', but also that I shall have every satisfaction from the knave whom the general ought to send to the galleys." "Be reasonable, and come with me of your own accord.
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