Captain Puffeigh was brought on deck during the day, and the seven men were duly reported to him. Without the slightest inquiry, upon the word of his first lieutenant, he sentenced two to receive four, and five of them three, dozen lashes upon their bare backs. Small boy Jordun was then paraded, and when he found all chance gone of obtaining justice from the gallant captain, he became very insolent; observing that the skipper would get a thundering good pounding if ever he showed his strawberry nose in Portsea, and that Crushe had better look out for hisself, when _his_ father heered _he_ had been flaked. "The depravity of the little fiend! To speak to me in that audacious manner upon my own quarter-deck! He ought to be keelhauled. Don't you think so, Crushe?" Of course the first lieutenant agreed with his commander. Keelhauling, gentle reader, was a frightful torture invented in a brutal age, and it is still sighed after by creatures like Puffeigh and Crushe. The punishment consisted in slinging a man in a peculiar manner, by a rope suspended from one yard arm, and running under the ship up to the other yard. Thus the victim was drawn down into the water, under the ship (which sometimes lacerated him in a frightful manner), and then run up to the yard arm on the other side. If he survived this he was lucky, as generally the operation finished the victim. Puffeigh felt sorry that he could not break the insolent boy's spirit by these gentle means, as the child's tender frame was admirably adapted to bear such a punishment. The commander shook his elegant signature upon the foot of each "warrant for punishment." He was not a learned judge, nor had he "patiently and carefully gone into each case," according to admiralty orders. Upon the morning after Puffeigh signed the warrants, the Stingers were all turned out at daylight. It was lovely weather, and as the ship steamed up the China sea everything around her looked calm and peaceful, while on board all was terror, discontent, and unhappiness. William Jordun, boy of the second class, was the first victim: and as small lads are tied over the breech of a gun, and flogged on a corresponding portion of their own anatomy, there was no grating to rig; consequently the preliminaries were of a primitive and unostentatious kind; the only persons to be present being Crushe, the assistant surgeon, and the ship's boys. Master William knew that in a manner the eyes of the fleet were upon him, so he determined to take his punishment like a stoic. The worthy and innocent lads who swarmed round the gun across which he was secured did all in their power to keep up his spirits, and until the dreaded first lieutenant made his appearance a casual observer might have imagined the boys were mustered to assist at some pleasing kind of ceremony. "Don't you holler, young Bill, and I'll give you a plug of genewine Wirginny," observed one small specimen.