THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 275 



that wealth, if obtained, they never seemed to con- 

 sider. Perhaps the lore of adventure, which is innate 

 in man, and was ever one of the strongest incentives to 

 action of mankind, lured them on. But whatever it 

 was that upheld them in their dogged facing of all 

 those miseries, the simple fact remains that they did 

 face them, and probably looked upon the prospect of 

 fighting, of shedding blood, as an agreeable interlude 

 to the terrible monotony of misery of which those early 

 voyages were composed. Moreover, every member of 

 the crew of one of those early ships of Spain and 

 Portugal might well have said, in the language of 

 Paul, " I die daily," in that, apart from the sufferings 

 inseparable from a seafaring life, he was at the mercy 

 of the cruellest of mankind in the persons of his own 

 officers, whose only idea of discipline was the exercise 

 of incessant brutality in such shape that the very 

 reading of those practices curdles the blood and makes 

 us wonder whether indeed these men were of like 

 feelings with us. Eeally the idea will seize us, whether 

 we invite it or not, that the actual warfare in which 

 these men were engaged was far less terrible than the 

 everyday occurrence of their miserable existences. 



Yet, in spite of all, they did endure, did reach 

 the golden land of promise, and there found helpless 

 creatures of other races upon whom they could 

 and did practise in their turn the atrocious cruelties 

 which they themselves had endured, proving that 

 they were lineal descendants of those ruthless pioneers 

 of sea-warfare the Carthaginians, and that the advent 

 of the Prince of Peace and their acceptance of His 

 teachings as the way of salvation had not modified 

 in the least, as far as their actions were concerned, the 



