Meanwhile Karl remained where he fell, groaning, trying to stop the flow of blood which was rapidly saturating his clothes; why the block didn’t crack his head like a walnut will ever remain a mystery to me; it would have broken the skull of any one but a Russian seaman. For some few minutes there was a dead silence fore and aft; then Rarx walked up to Karl, shook him heavily, and cried, “Now, then, get away out o’ this, you ---- ---- ----; fine mess you’ve made on the deck. Go wipe the blood out o’ yer eyes, and bring a swab and get this out the deck, _and don’t you be long about it, neither_.” It struck me that this was rather hard lines, having to mop up your own blood; but in a few minutes more Karl recovered enough to totter forward, and when he next appeared he had a bucket of sand and water and a broom, and at the end of half an hour no trace of the assault remained save a large gloomy stain, which will have to wear out. Later in the evening I remarked to MacFoy that this was the most villanous and unprovoked piece of brutality that I ever imagined, and that it was astonishing that a man who appeared to be such a well-principled fellow as Rarx would do such a thing. “Well-principled, is it? Huh,” was David’s comment; “peaceable enough to you aft I guess, but you’d think different if you could see him dark nights on the main-deck wearin’ ship. Did you ever see a Yankee second mate that wasn’t a hound?” “I don’t know very much about them personally,” I answered, “but they certainly have a hard name; the only other American second mate whom I ever knew was on a foreign ship, where he had to treat the sailors like men.” “Oh,” said MacFoy, “what do you think o’ what you saw this afternoon?” “Well, about the only thing anybody could say about it is that it was damnable,” I answered. Here the bosun looked steadily at me and said, “If you’d seen what I have in these ships for four years you’d think no more o’ that than steppin’ on a cockroach.” At any rate, I’ll never forget the scene at the instant before the block struck Karl’s face: about half the watch in the rigging looking angrily down, the clumsy form of the Russian spinning round from the kick, and the second mate standing over him, red with anger, in the act of swinging the block well back to gather force for the blow. And this is what is known as “discipline” in Yankee deep-water men! Well, my only comment is, thank God that my wife wasn’t on deck to see it. Latitude, 17° 45′ south; longitude, 38° 5′ west. +June 18+