After breakfast I went upon deck, and saw a Deal boat making for the ship. She came along in slashing style, under her broad lug--what splendid boats those Deal luggers are, and how superbly the fellows handle them!--and in a short time was near enough to enable me to see that she towed our quarter-boat astern, and that Coxon and Duckling were among her occupants. I went to the gangway to receive her: she fell off, then luffed, running a fine semicircle; down dropped her lug, her mizzen brought her right to, and she came alongside with beautiful precision, stopping under the gangway like a carriage at your door. I caught the line that was flung from her, took a turn with it, and then Coxon and the chief mate stepped on board. The moment he touched the deck, Coxon called to the men who were hanging about the forecastle. "Get your traps together, and out with you! If ever a man among you stops in my ship five minutes, I'll fling him overboard." With which terrible threat he walked into the cuddy. Duckling remained at the gangway to see the crew leave the ship. The poor fellows were all ready. They had made up their minds to go ashore, but hardly knew under what circumstances. I had noticed them pressing forward to look into the boat when she came alongside, no doubt expecting to see the uniform of a police-superintendent there. The presence of such an official would, of course, have meant imprisonment to them; they would have been locked up until brought before the magistrates. They were clearly disappointed by the skipper's procedure, for as they came to the gangway, carrying their bags and chests, all kinds of remarks, expressive of their opinion on the matter, were uttered by them. "The old blackguard," said one, flinging his bag into the boat, and lingering before Duckling and myself in order to deliver his observations, "he hasn't the pluck to have us tried. Pitch us overboard! let him try his (etc.) hand upon the littlest of us! I'd take six months, and thank 'em, just to warm my fist on his (etc.) face!" and so forth. Duckling was wise to hold his peace. The men were furious enough to have massacred him had he opened his lips. The older hands got into the boat in silence; but none of the rest left the ship without some candid expression of his feelings. One said he'd gladly pay a pound for leave to set fire to the ship. Another called her a floating workhouse. A third hoped that the vessel would be sunk, and the brutes commanding her drowned before this time to-morrow. Every evil wish that malice and rage could invent was hurled at the vessel and at those who remained in her. In after days I recalled that beautiful morning, the picture of the lugger alongside the ship, the hungry, ill-used men with their poor packs going over the vessel's side, and the curses they pronounced as they left us. An incident followed the entry of the last of the men in the boat.