The gratings are rigged, the hands are turned up, and Joshua Daunton is supported by two ship's corporals in a nearly fainting state, and stripped by another--he is too much paralysed to do it himself. The officers are mustered on the break of the quarter-deck, and the marines are drawn up, under arms, on the gangway. Captain Reud looks fierce and forbidding, and Mr Farmer, for his generally impassible features, really quite savage. I come forward shudderingly and look down. The wandering and restless eyes of the frightened young man meet, in an instant, what, most probably, they are seeking--my own. "Ralph Rattlin, speak for me to the captain." The words were in themselves simple, but they were uttered in a tone of the most touching pathos. They made me start: I thought that I knew the voice, not as the voice of Joshua Daunton, the mischievous imp that had tormented us all so scientifically, but of some dear and long-forgotten friend. "Ralph Rattlin, speak for me to the captain--this must not be." "But it shall be, by G---!" said the irascible Creole. "Captain Reud," said I, "let me entreat you for this once only--" "Boatswain's mate--" "Oh, Captain Reud, if you knew what a strange sympathy--" "The thief's cat." "Indeed, sir, since he has been on board he has never stolen--" "Mr Rattlin, another word, and the masthead. Stand back, Stebbins!-- let Douglas give him the first dozen." Now, this Douglas was a huge, raw-boned boatswain's mate that flogged left handed, and had also a peculiar jerk in his manner of laying on the cat-o'-nine-tails, and that always brought away with it little knobs of flesh wherever the knots fell, and so neatly, that blood would, at every blow, spout from the wounds, as from the puncture of a lancet. Besides, the torture was also doubled by first scoring over the back in one direction, and the right-handed floggers coming after in another. They cut out the skin in lozenges. I looked in the captain's face, and there was no mercy; I looked below, and there appeared almost as little life. After the left-handed Scotchman had bared his brawny arm and measured his distance, and just as he was about to uplift it and strike, Daunton murmured out, "Ralph Rattlin, I knew your father! beware, or your own blood will be dishonoured in me!" "That voice!--they shall flog you through me!" I exclaimed, and was about to leap into the waist, and cover him with my arms, when I was forcibly withheld by the officers around me; whilst the captain roared out, "He shall have another dozen for his impudent falsehood-- boatswain's mate, do your duty." The terrific lash, like angry scorpions, fell upon the white and quivering flesh, and the blood spurted out freely. It was a vengeful stroke; and loud, and long, and shrill was the scream that followed it. But, ere the second stroke fell, the head of the tortured one suddenly collapsed upon the right shoulder, and a livid hue spread rapidly over the face and breast.