“It was, indeed,” replied the old pensioner, “till it got to be a kind of Solomon’s proverb, that ‘a king’s ship and the gallows refused nobody,’ and the tars that had always done their duty in battle and in storm, felt it a great degradation to be mustered with felons and jail-birds, and rely upon it, your honour, it prevented many a brave lad from volunteering; for who would go for to enter the sarvice, when almost every ship had a black list as long as the main-top bowline. Besides, there was another concarn that bred evils as fast as barnacles grows on the bottom of a dull sailer. D’ye mind, the fellows didn’t love work, and when there was a fresh breeze, they either skulked down below, or got kicked about upon deck like a Muscovy duck in the lee scuppers, and a captain was often obliged to flog even against his own inclination. In course of time, the lubberly sons of ---- chafed his temper till the strands parted, and then he became severe, and from severity proceeded to cruelty, till discrimination was foundered, and the cat’s tails were felt by the good man as well as the bad. Now this was very likely the case with Captain P----, and I’m the more strengthened in the likelihoods of it by what followed; for though in the heat of passion reason is shrivelled and scorched up like the fag-end of an exploded cartridge, and a man may be driven to dye his hands in the blood of a countryman, yet when passion has grown cool and the beatings of the heart have become steady and true, like the droppings of the sand in the half-hour glass, none but a murderer,--a detestable, cowardly, craven-breasted murderer,--would bury his knife in the body of youth. Shame! shame!” exclaimed the veteran, as he shook his hoary head, and his cheeks assumed a flush of abhorrent indignation; “shame! shame!--but I forget all this time I arn’t telling you the story. Captain P----, sir, always came out of his cabin arter dinner,--you mind me, sir, _arter dinner_,--and had the hands turned up to reef top-sails; and if they were more than two minutes and a half about it, he flogged the last man who came off each yard. Well, on the day before the mutiny,--I think I told you there was a mutiny, but if not I tell you so now,--on the day before the mutiny, the hands were turned up as usual and the mizen-topmen were rather slack in stays; so he, that’s the captain, your honour,--swore he would flog the last man off the mizen-top-sail yard. Now you must understand, the smartest seamen are always at the yard-arms to haul out the earings, and consequently, unless they can spring over the heads of the other topmen, they must be the last to lie-in. Well, so it happened this evening, and the two captains of the top, knowing that their commander would keep his word, made a spring for the top-mast rigging; in their haste and fear they missed their grasp, and fell on to the quarter-deck. They were both young, active men, and were much