“Um! dead, are they? Then throw the lubbers overboard!” And this was actually done. Without the slightest pretence to ceremony or reverence of any kind, without so much as a single prayer to consecrate their dismissal to their final resting-place in the bosom of the deep, without even pausing to sew up the poor fellows in their hammocks, with a shot at their feet to ensure their safe arrival in the quiet and peaceful region of the ocean’s bed, the bodies were straightway raised from the deck and, with a “One, two, three, heave!” were flung over the side, to be instantly fought over and torn to pieces by some half a dozen sharks which had put in an unsuspected appearance on the scene. Many a curse, “not loud but deep,” was called down upon the skipper’s head that night by the shipmates of the murdered men—for murdered they undoubtedly were—and many a vow of complete and speedy vengeance was solemnly registered. Insulted, scoffed at, derided, their last spark of self-respect—if indeed any such thing still remained to them—outraged and trodden under foot, the crew were that night changed from men to devils; and if, at the conclusion of those unceremonious obsequies, a leader had but stepped forward and placed himself at their head, they would have risen upon us and, all unarmed as they were, torn us to pieces.
No such thought or fear, however, appeared to present itself to Captain Pigot, for, instead of evincing or expressing any sorrow for what had occurred, he imperiously ordered the hands to be mustered in the waist, with the evident intention of “reading them a lecture,” as he was wont to term his too frequent hectoring addresses.
The men, sullen, and with suppressed fury blazing in their eyes and revealing itself in their every gesture, swarmed aft and stood in reckless expectation of some further outrage. Nor were they disappointed.
“I have sent for you,” the skipper began, in his most sneering and contemptuous accents, “not to express any hypocritical sorrow for the occurrence which has just taken place, but to point out to you the obvious lesson which is to be learned from it—a lesson which I fear your dense ignorance, your utter destitution of discernment and common-sense, would prevent your ever discovering for yourselves. Within the last half-hour two men have come to their deaths. How? Why, by a sneaking, cowardly attempt to evade the punishment justly due to the lazy, skulking, lubberly way in which they performed their duty. It would have been better for them had they listened to the first lieutenant’s admonition and come quietly down from aloft, to receive at a proper time the punishment which they richly deserved. But they must needs attempt to shirk it, with the consequences which you have all witnessed; and, so far as I am concerned, I can only say that I think they have met with no more than their just deserts.
“But it is not of them I want to speak to you; it is of yourselves. The same shirking, idle, rebellious spirit which distinguished them is conspicuous in every one of you. It is little more than a couple of hours ago that your officers waited upon me in a body to make formal complaint of your idleness and insubordinate conduct. There was no necessity for them to do any such thing, for I am not altogether lacking in powers of observation, and I have not failed to notice that for some time past there has been a general disposition on the part of all hands to thwart and oppose me in every possible way; but I just mention the fact of this complaint to show you that I am not alone in my opinion as to your conduct. Now, my lads, you are a great many, and I am only one man; but if you suppose that on that account you will be able to get your own way, or successfully oppose me, you will discover that you never made a greater mistake in your lives. You may shirk your work, or perform it in a slovenly, unseamanlike manner as long as you please, but I warn you, one and all, that I have made up my mind to convert you from the lazy, skulking, mutinous set of tinkers and tailors you now are, into the smartest and best-disciplined crew in the service; and by Heaven I will do it too, even though it should be necessary to administer a daily flogging to every man in the ship. There are some few of you who are a shade worse—a shade more idle, and lubberly, and insubordinate—than the rest; you, Jones, are one; you, Hoskings, are another, and you, Thomson, Kirkpatrick, Davis, Morrison, I have my eye upon all of you; you are booked, every man of you, for an early taste of the cat; and I assure you that when it comes it will be a sharp one. You shall learn that, in laying yourselves out to oppose your captain, you have undertaken a task altogether beyond your strength. You shall have neither rest nor peace day or night, henceforward, until I have completely quelled your present rebellious spirit and brought you to a proper condition of subordination and smartness. So now, my lads, you know what you have to expect, and, whatever happens, you will never be able to say that I did not give you due warning. Pipe down!”
The men turned away and dispersed in perfect silence. Usually after the administration of a lecture, however severe, some irrepressible joker might be detected with his head cocked on one side and his face with a waggish grin upon it, turned toward his next neighbour, evidently giving utterance to some jocular comment upon the lately-delivered address, as he gave his breeches the true nautical hitch forward and abaft; but on this occasion there was nothing of the kind, the indignation and disgust aroused by the skipper’s arrogant and threatening speech appeared to be altogether too overpowering to allow of the escape of a humorous idea to the surface.
The silence of the men was so complete as to be, to my mind, ominous, whilst their bearing was marked by that peculiar air of defiant recklessness which is to be observed in individuals who feel that Fortune has at length done her very worst for them. How much longer, I wondered, would they thus tamely suffer themselves to be hectored and browbeaten? how much longer go quietly to the gangway and submit to be severely flogged for the most trifling offences? Then, too, I felt indignant at the unscrupulous way in which the skipper had misrepresented the nature of the officers’ recent interview with him, and had conveyed the impression that they were rather favouring than deprecating the severity of his discipline. Such conduct struck me as being not only barbarously tyrannical, but also in the highest degree impolitic; for what could any man of sense expect but that, by persistence in it, he would make good men bad, and bad men worse. And if the men were to turn restive in the presence of an enemy—which was, to my mind, not unlikely, though I never anticipated anything worse—what would be the result? The whole aspect of affairs looked unsatisfactory in the extreme, and when I turned into my hammock that night it was to indulge in sundry very gloomy forebodings before I finally dropped off to sleep; though Heaven knows how far I was from guessing at the scenes of horror of which the frigate was to be the theatre before another twenty-four hours had passed over my head.