"Now just listen to me a moment, Frank, and I'll ask you a question," said Perk. "Can that brutal fellow do anything to Uncle Dick for assisting his man to escape?"
"If you should see me assaulted by ruffians who were getting the better of me, and should rescue me from their clutches, could they do anything to you in law?" asked Frank, in reply.
"Certainly not."
"The same law holds good on the sea. Some people have a very mistaken idea of things. They insist on a landsman's right of self-defence, but deny the same to a sailor. Even sailors themselves think that because they follow the sea for a livelihood, they are debarred from exercising the very first law of our nature."
"Hear! hear!" cried Archie.
"Silence in the court-room!" exclaimed Featherweight, assuming a fierce frown. "Hurrah for free trade and sailors' rights, the motto on—on—somebody's flag! Proceed, brother Nelson. State the case to the jury."
Frank laughed as heartily as the rest for a few minutes, and continued:
"Sailors know that resistance to an officer, or even an attempt to spread dissatisfaction among the crew of a vessel, is called mutiny; and they know, too, that men have been hanged in the American navy for that very offence."
"See Cooper's Naval History for an account of the mutiny on board the United States brig-of-war Somers, in 1842," said Bab.
"That was the very circumstance I had in my mind," returned Frank. "Sailors know all this, as I was saying, and consequently they are afraid to call their souls their own. They suffer in silence, unless they are driven to commit suicide during the voyage, and when they get ashore forget it all, or make a feeble attempt to punish their tyrants by process of law, but they soon give it up, for at the very outset they find an insurmountable obstacle in their way. Before they can convict they must prove three things—that the punishment they received was cruel and unusual; that it was inflicted without any just cause; and that the occasion of it was malice, hatred, or a desire for revenge on the part of the officer who punished them. Now, no living being can prove this last accusation against another, for in order to do it he must be able to read his fellow-men as he would an open book, and see what is passing in their minds; and even that would do him no good unless he possessed the power to make the judge and jury who try the case see the matter just as he does."