The man pulled off his clothes, and walked up to the grating. The quarter-masters seized him up.
“Seized up, sir,” reported the scoundrel of a sergeant of marines, who acted as the captain’s spy.
The captain looked for the articles of war to read, as is necessary previous to punishing a man, and was a little puzzled to find one, where no positive offence had been committed. At last he pitched upon the one which refers to combination and conspiracy, and creating discontent. We all took off our hats as he read it, and he then called Mr Paul, the boatswain, and ordered him to give the man a dozen.
“Please, sir,” said the boatswain, pointing to his arm in a sling, “I can’t flog—I can’t lift up my arm.”
“Your arm was well enough when I came on board, sir,” cried the captain.
“Yes, sir; but in hurrying the men up, I slipped down the ladder, and I’m afraid I’ve put my shoulder out.”
The captain bit his lips; he fully believed it was a sham on the part of the boatswain (which indeed it was), to get off flogging the men. “Well, then, where is the chief boatswain’s mate, Collins?”
“Here, sir,” said Collins, coming forward: a stout, muscular man, nearly six feet high, with a pig-tail nearly four feet long, and his open breast covered with black shaggy hair.
“Give that man a dozen, sir,” said the captain.
The man looked at the captain, then at the ship’s company, and then at the man seized up, but did not commence the punishment.