Nor was that sentence a dead letter; the unhappy man endured it to the letter. Fifty were laid on alongside of the Macedonian, in conformity with a common practice of inflicting the most strokes at the first ship, in order that the gory back of the criminal may strike the more terror into the crews of the other ships. This poor tortured man bore two hundred and twenty, and was pronounced by the attending surgeon unfit to receive the rest. Galled, bruised, and agonized as he was, he besought him to suffer the infliction of the remaining eighty, that he might not be called to pass through the degrading scene again; but this prayer was denied! He was brought on board, and when his wounds were healed, the captain, Shylock-like, determined to have the whole pound of flesh, ordered him to receive the remainder.
But for my desire to present the reader with a true exhibition of life on board a British man of war, it would be my choice to suppress these disgusting details of cruelty and punishment. But this is impossible; I must either draw a false picture or describe them. I choose the latter, in the hope that giving publicity to these facts will exert a favorable influence on the already improving discipline of ships of war.
The case of our ship’s drummer will illustrate the hopelessness of our situation under such officers as commanded our ship; it will show that implicit, uncomplaining submission was our only resource. This drummer, being seized up for some petty offence, demanded, what no captain can refuse, to be tried by a court-martial; in the hope, probably, of escaping altogether. The officers laughed among each other, and when, a few days afterwards, the poor, affrighted man offered to withdraw the demand and take six dozen lashes, they coolly remarked, “The drummer is sick of his bargain.” He would have been a wiser man had he never made it; for the court-martial sentenced him to receive two hundred lashes through the fleet:—a punishment ostensibly for his first offence, but really for his insolence (?) in demanding a trial by court-martial. Such was the administration of justice (?) on board the Macedonian.
“Why did not your crew rise in resistance to such cruelty?” is a question which has often been proposed to me, when relating these facts to my American friends. To talk of mutiny on shore is an easy matter; but to excite it on shipboard is to rush on to certain death. Let it be known that a man has dared to breathe the idea, and he is sure to swing at the yard-arm. Some of our men once saw six mutineers hanging at the yard-arm at once, in a ship whose crew exhibited the incipient beginnings of mutiny. Let mutiny be successful, the government will employ its whole force, if needful, in hunting down the mutineers; their blood, to the last drop, is the terrible retribution it demands for this offence. That demand is sure to be met, as was the case with the crew of the Hermione[5] frigate, and with the crew of the ill-fated Bounty, whose history is imprinted on the memory of the whole civilized world. With such tragedies flitting before our eyes, who need ask why we did not resist?
Just before we left Lisbon for another cruise, my position was once more changed by my appointment to the post of servant to the sailing-master; whose boy, for some offence or other, was flogged and turned away. Here, too, the captain procured a fine band, composed of Frenchmen, Italians and Germans, taken by the Portuguese from a French vessel. These musicians consented to serve, on condition of being excused from fighting, and on a pledge of exemption from being flogged. They used to play to the captain during his dinner hour; the party to be amused usually consisting of the captain and one or two invited guests from the ward-room; except on Sundays, when he chose to honor the ward-room with his august presence. The band then played for the ward-room. They also played on deck whenever we entered or left a port. On the whole, their presence was an advantage to the crew, since their spirit-stirring strains served to spread an occasional cheerful influence over them. Soon after they came on board, we had orders to proceed to sea again on another cruise.
CHAPTER IV
A few days after we had fairly got out to sea, the thrilling cry of “A man overboard!” ran through the ship with electrical effect; it was followed by another cry of, “Heave out a rope!” then by still another, of “Cut away the life buoy!” Then came the order, “Lower a boat!” Notwithstanding the rapidity of these commands, and the confusion occasioned by the anticipated loss of a man, they were rapidly obeyed. The ship was then hove to. But that time, however, the cause of all this excitement was at a considerable distance from the ship. It was a poor Swede, named Logholm, who, while engaged in lashing the larboard anchor stock, lost his hold and fell into the sea. He could not swim; but, somehow, he managed to keep afloat until the boat reached him, when he began to sink. The man at the bow ran his boat hook down, and caught the drowning man by his clothes: his clothes tearing, the man lost his hold, and the Swede once more sunk. Again the active bowsman ran the hook down, leaning far over the side; fortunately, he got hold of his shirt collar: dripping, and apparently lifeless, they drew him into the boat. He was soon under the surgeon’s care, whose skill restored him to animation and to life. It was a narrow escape!