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- 5275
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.270Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5204
- text
- At the summons the crew crowded round the main-mast; multitudes eager
to obtain a good place on the booms, to overlook the scene; many
laughing and chatting, others canvassing the case of the culprits; some
maintaining sad, anxious countenances, or carrying a suppressed
indignation in their eyes; a few purposely keeping behind to avoid
looking on; in short, among five hundred men, there was every possible
shade of character.
All the officers—midshipmen included—stood together in a group on the
starboard side of the main-mast; the First Lieutenant in advance, and
the surgeon, whose special duty it is to be present at such times,
standing close by his side.
Presently the Captain came forward from his cabin, and stood in the
centre of this solemn group, with a small paper in his hand. That paper
was the daily report of offences, regularly laid upon his table every
morning or evening, like the day’s journal placed by a bachelor’s
napkin at breakfast.
“Master-at-arms, bring up the prisoners,” he said.
A few moments elapsed, during which the Captain, now clothed in his
most dreadful attributes, fixed his eyes severely upon the crew, when
suddenly a lane formed through the crowd of seamen, and the prisoners
advanced—the master-at-arms, rattan in hand, on one side, and an armed
marine on the other—and took up their stations at the mast.
“You John, you Peter, you Mark, you Antone,” said the Captain, “were
yesterday found fighting on the gun-deck. Have you anything to say?”
Mark and Antone, two steady, middle-aged men, whom I had often admired
for their sobriety, replied that they did not strike the first blow;
that they had submitted to much before they had yielded to their
passions; but as they acknowledged that they had at last defended
themselves, their excuse was overruled.
John—a brutal bully, who, it seems, was the real author of the
disturbance—was about entering into a long extenuation, when he was cut
short by being made to confess, irrespective of circumstances, that he
had been in the fray.
Peter, a handsome lad about nineteen years old, belonging to the
mizzen-top, looked pale and tremulous. He was a great favourite in his
part of the ship, and especially in his own mess, principally composed
of lads of his own age. That morning two of his young mess-mates had
gone to his bag, taken out his best clothes, and, obtaining the
permission of the marine sentry at the “brig,” had handed them to him,
to be put on against being summoned to the mast. This was done to
propitiate the Captain, as most captains love to see a tidy sailor. But
it would not do. To all his supplications the Captain turned a deaf
ear. Peter declared that he had been struck twice before he had
returned a blow. “No matter,” said the Captain, “you struck at last,
instead of reporting the case to an officer. I allow no man to fight on
board here but myself. I do the fighting.”
“Now, men,” he added, “you all admit the charge; you know the penalty.
Strip! Quarter-masters, are the gratings rigged?”
The gratings are square frames of barred wood-work, sometimes placed
over the hatchways. One of these squares was now laid on the deck,
close to the ship’s bulwarks, and while the remaining preparations were
being made, the master-at-arms assisted the prisoners in removing their
jackets and shirts. This done, their shirts were loosely thrown over
their shoulders.
At a sign from the Captain, John, with a shameless leer, advanced, and
stood passively upon the grating, while the bare-headed old
quarter-master, with grey hair streaming in the wind, bound his feet to
the cross-bars, and, stretching out his arms over his head, secured
them to the hammock-nettings above. He then retreated a little space,
standing silent.
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- Chunk 2