Produced by Michael Wooff
The Black Galley
A story by Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910)
I.
Along the walls of Fort Liefkenhoek.
It was a dark and stormy night in the first days of November ofthe year 1599 when the Spanish sentry in Fort Liefkenhoek on theFlemish side of the Scheldt sounded the alarm, urgent drummingwoke the sleeping garrison and each man there, commander-in-chiefand ordinary soldier alike, took up their posts on the fortress'swalls.
The waves of the Scheldt were running high and often disgorgingflecks of foam in the face of the shivering Southerners over theramparts. A northeasterly wind whistled sharply down from the"Provinces", and the Spaniards had already known for a long timethat it was seldom that anything good came to them from that quarter.
In Fort Lillo as well, on the Brabant side of the river, the sticksof the drums were whirling and the horn was being sounded. Onecould hear quite clearly over the noise of the storm and the waterstossed by a tempest the sound of far-off cannon fire, which couldonly be emanating from a battle at sea at the mouth of the Scheldt.
The sea beggars were up to their old tricks again.
What did this race of amphibians care about darkness and storms?Were not nightfall and stormy weather their best allies? When hada sea beggar ever been afraid of a stormy sea and darkness when itcame to annihilating the enemy, to outmanoeuvring his deadliestenemies, those who had laid waste to and oppressed his homelandwon back from the waves.
The war, however, had taken a terrible turn for the worse.
This coming and going of the belligerents had lasted now for twoand thirty years and there was still no foreseeable end to it. Thesowing of the dragon's teeth had yielded a generous harvest—men ofiron had indeed sprung from the blood-drenched earth and even womenhad had to forget what kindness and clemency were. There was now ayounger generation who, for this very reason, did not long for peacebecause they had never known what peace was.
And if the violence of the war had worsened on dry land, it waseven more horrendous at sea. At least on land prisoners could beexchanged or ransomed—towns, villages and hamlets could sparethemselves burning and sacking by buying off would-be attackers.At sea, however, there were no pardons and no ransoms. It washeld to be merciful to put enemy prisoners to the sword withoutfurther ado or to hang them from a yardarm and not to slowlytorture them to death in the cruellest way possible or to nailthem to the deck and sink them along with their captured ship.
Commanding officers and ordinary soldiers on the walls of FortLiefkenhoek listened with rapt attention to the cannon fire andshared their opinions on it. One person would have one view onthe parties to the skirmish, someone else another, but, finally,whispered at first, then louder and more surely, the word wentfrom mouth to mouth among the soldiers:
"The black galley, the black galley again!"
Each of them spat out the same message with a tone between angerand uncanny dread:
"The black galley!"
Towards one o'clock in the morning the wind died down and thecannons too fell silent. Twenty minutes later there was a suddenburst of flame in the far, far distance that left the dark waterlooking blood-red from an equally bloody flash of lightning. Thegarish illumination flickered over hundreds of bearded and wildfaces on the walls of Forts Liefkenhoek and Lillo and, half asecond later, the dull t