"In the next twenty-four hours four men came aft to the skipper for medical treatment from the medicine chest. Red-head had disabled them, in one way or another. One had a broken rib, the result of a punch; the skipper set it. Another had lost some teeth, and showed a few more that were loose. The skipper called upon the carpenter and his pliers to remove these, and sent the man forward. Another was carried aft, unconscious from a fist blow under the ear; and the skipper could only lay him out on a cabin transom to wait until he came to. The last was a case of asthma. Red-head had planted his fist plumb upon his throat, and the resultant inflammation threatened to strangle the man. But the skipper gave him a porous plaster for his chest, and a big cathartic pill by means of which the man came around. You know the Yankee skipper's formula: break your leg or lose your mother—take a pill.
"Well, the outcome of this was that the skipper held a conference of himself, the first mate, and myself. He stated the situation: a man forward was a menace to the tranquillity and the safety of the ship. Who would take him down?
"The first mate, with a look of patronizing pity at me, said to the captain, 'I'll do this, if nobody else can,' again the look of pity. 'I'll show him who's who, and what, and which.'
"'Well,' said the skipper, 'do so, or I'll be afraid of my officers.'
"I looked on while the mate called that troublesome malcontent down from aloft, where he had reported the paral seizing of the fore royal yard adrift without saying sir to Mr. Parker. I watched tranquilly, while the big, whiskered first mate, meeting the man as he dropped from the fore-rigging to the deck, received a threshing of fists and kicks that laid him out. We carried him aft, while Red-head retired to the forecastle. And, as we nursed the mate back to self-respect, we heard the profane vows of Red-head to clean us up, all of us.
"The skipper was furious. 'Have I got to go forrard and lick that fellow?' he said. 'Haven't I got a mate aft able to do his duty?'
"'Why not put him in irons, captain?' I asked. 'I knocked him off the poop once, and made him run next time. That seems to be enough as far as I'm concerned.'
"The skipper glared at me. 'And do you think,' he said sneeringly, 'that he ran because he was afraid of you? He's afraid of the irons and of the law. But that's just why we don't appeal to the irons and the law in these packets. It's a point of honor with us; and—yes, a matter of policy. We couldn't get crews after a time if we ironed and jailed 'em for each offense. No, that man must be properly licked, and if you can't do it, I'll have to do it myself.'
"'I can do it,' I answered quietly, and went forward.
"Mike—for that was the name he gave—was in my watch, and should have remained on deck. I found him in the empty starboard forecastle and called him out. He came, with a bad look in his eyes.