McTee closed the door and went back onto the deck, for he suddenly understood the futility of questions. Harrigan, in the meantime, had waited for the return of McTee, and when the latter did not come, the Irishman lingered on the bridge for an hour or more, pottering about with his brush in a pretense of finishing up a perfect job. His attention was drawn then by a gathering crowd and bustle in the waist of the ship between the wheelhouse and the forecastle. The entire crew of the _Heron_ seemed to be mustering, with the exception of those needed to keep the engines running. They stood in a circle, leaving the cover of the hatch clear. He hurried down to witness the ceremony, and as he reached the waist, he saw Henshaw take up his position with folded arms in the very center of the hatch. A moment later Kamasura was led up by Eric Borgson and Jan Van Roos. The two mates, under the direction of Henshaw, lashed the Japanese face down upon the hatch, pulling his arms and legs taut with ropes that fastened to the bolts on all sides of the hatch cover. When he was securely tied, Kamasura was stripped to the waist, and then Harrigan saw Borgson, grinning evilly, step up with a long whip in his hand. It was a blacksnake, heavily loaded and stiff at the butt and tapering gradually to a slender, supple, snakelike body, with a thin, sinister lash. Borgson whirled the whip around his head to get its balance. Henshaw stepped back, still with folded arms. "This fellow Kamasura," he announced to the crew, "has blown up the boats of the _Heron_. There's no doubt of it. Borgson caught him almost in the act. I could do worse things than this to Kamasura, but I've decided to flog him until he confesses." There was not a word of answer from the crew; they waited, hushed, ominous. A whisper sounded in the ear of Harrigan, who stood with gritting teeth and clenched hands. It was McTee who murmured: "Hold onto yourself, Harrigan. Our time hasn't come." "I'll hold onto myself all right," said Harrigan, "but look at the crew." In fact, there was something more deadly than any snarling of a crowd in this unnatural silence of many men. Also they were not looking at Kamasura; they were staring, every man, at the bos'n, who stood with his whistle hanging from a cord around his neck. "Begin!" said Henshaw. The blacksnake whistled around the head of the third mate and there was a long scream from Kamasura--but the blacksnake only cracked loudly in the air. Borgson laughed with a hideous delight. Harrigan, sickly white, bowed his head. Again the blacksnake whirled and again it cracked, but this time on naked flesh, and the scream of Kamasura was like the cut of a knife. Again, again, and again the blacksnake fell, and now Kamasura twisted his head toward the captain and cried in a voice made thin by pain and rage at once: "I confess! Captain, let me speak!"