Aurelie washes the rowing deck

Aurelie took a deep breath… and immediately began to cough. The stench was so thick it really assaulted the throat. How could all those women toil here without fainting from the reek? Anyway, she had a job to do. The sooner it would be done, the sooner she would be back on the upper deck. She hooked the leather bag containing her camera to a nail next to the door and went back to her big pail.

With no broomstick or other device, she would have to work on her knees. The prospect of touching the filthy floor with her bare skin was disgusting but there seemed to be no other choice. In the pail was a large piece of dirty cloth. She took it out and twisted it to drain it from its water. There did not seem to be much soap in it. She wondered how useful it would be to use dirty water to clean the planking but a look at the accumulated filth told her that mere water would already do a lot of good.

She went down to her knees, feeling the damp penetrate through her pants and, bending down, she began to rub the floor with the cloth. After having scrubbed a few feet of deck the rag was already filled with filth and she had to soak it again in her pail. As she worked, her back bent, she could hear the whipmaster lashing the poor toiling slaves, who moaned and screamed and grunted under the effort that was expected from them. Aurelie glanced at them as she worked. Some were in a dreadful state, famished, hardly able to work. All were fitted with heavy shackles connected to thick chains. Most were naked. It soon became obvious that all that was real. They were not faking the pain or the effort. Were they all masochistic women? There was no sign of pleasure on their faces and it was difficult to imagine one could enjoy such a harsh treatment.

Aurelie had to clean the central alley that ran in between the benches. That part was comparatively clean. The filth mostly gathered in the area under the slaves themselves. The benches there were sitting on were narrow and tall enough that she could crawl under them. There the filth was truly stomach-turning. Somehow sea water ran along the oars or oozed through the hull of the ship. It mixed with the slaves' urine and blood to form a fetid pool under their seats and feet. That was a real infection and Aurelie was **** to crawl through it as she tried to clean it with her dirty rag. She could not prevent her long red curls from touching the disgusting liquid. The front of her clothes was soon soaked with a mix of her sweat and from that stinking substance.

Every second row, Aurelie's pail and rag were so full of filth that she had to empty it. She had to carry the heavy vessel to a scuttle opened in the flank of the galley, lift it and pour its content out board. Then she had to fill the pail again by handling a sea water pump. Along with the scrubbing of the floor, that was back-breaking work. After completing her sixth row she was exhausted. She looked like a mess now, glistening with sweat, soaked in filth, her matted hair sticking to her face. Her knees ached from grinding against the splintery planking, her back was in fire, her arms and hands were knotted with cramps.

As she carried her pail with difficulty towards the seventh row, she began to wonder who among the rowers and herself had the easier work.