The word had flown about the decks that the English cutter was alongside with a message from the flagship. The crew had all tumbled up from below, and a hum of voices arose from the forecastle.
"Bill Roberts, here, he was on watch when they hauled 'im on board, warent ye, Bill?—I seed him when they brought 'im below—he had the shakes bad, didn't he, Bill?" The speaker was a short, thickset man, who had a way of turning his head quickly from side to side as he spoke. His long, well-wrapped queue that hung down his back would whip across from one shoulder to the other.
"We thought it was one of yesterday's liberty party trying to get back to the ship," responded the man addressed as Bill. "But when we got him on deck we seed as how he warent one of us, as I told the First Luf. Did you see his back, Tom, when we peeled his shirt off?"
"God a' mercy! I seed it."
Well those marks were known. Deep red scars, crisscrossed with heavy, unhealed, blue-rimmed cuts, feverish and noisome.
"He was whipped through the fleet ten days ago. So he says. I don't know what for, exactly; says he found a midshipman's handkerchief on deck, and not knowin' whose 'was, put it into his ditty box—some such yarn.—Jack here, he tells of somethin' like that, when he was impressed out of the Ariadne into the old Southampton, don't ye, Jack?"
"Yes, but damn the yarn—this fellow—where is he now?" asked a tall, light-haired foretopman, around whose muscular throat was tattooed a chain and locket, the latter with a very red-cheeked and exceedingly blue-eyed young person smiling out through the opening in his shirt.
"He's hidin' somewhere down in the hold, I reckon," answered a little, nervous man; "nobody could find him this morning; guess he's had all the spunk licked out of him."
"I've heard tell of that before," remarked the tall foretopman. "His spirit's broke."
Just at this moment the English Lieutenant who had borne the message from the Admiral hurried up from the cabin where he had been in consultation with Captain Hull. His face was very red, and he gave a hasty glance at the crowded forecastle, as if trying to enumerate the men and their quality. Then he hastened down the side, and when he had rowed off some dozen strokes he gave the order to cease rowing. Then standing up he looked back at the frigate he had left, taking in all her points, the number of her guns, and marking her heavy scantling with a critic's eye. Then he seated himself again, and pulled away for the flagship.