"There," remarked the skipper, as he viewed his work by
the light of day, "I guess that fellow'll know his place next
time an officer an' a gentleman speaks to him."

That Billy survived is one of the hitherto unrecorded
miracles of the power of matter over mind. A man of intellect,
of imagination, a being of nerves, would have succumbed to the
shock alone; but Billy was not as these. He
simply lay still and thoughtless, except for half-formed ideas
of revenge, until Nature, unaided, built up what the captain
had so ruthlessly torn down.

Ten days after they brought him up from the hold Billy
was limping about the deck of the Halfmoon doing light
manual labor. From the other sailors aboard he learned
that he was not the only member of the crew who had been
shanghaied. Aside from a half-dozen reckless men from the
criminal classes who had signed voluntarily, either because
they could not get a berth upon a decent ship, or desired to
flit as quietly from the law zone of the United States as
possible, not a man was there who had been signed regularly.

They were as tough and vicious a lot as Fate ever had
foregathered in one forecastle, and with them Billy Byrne
felt perfectly at home. His early threats of awful vengeance
to be wreaked upon the mate and skipper had subsided with
the rough but sensible advice of his messmates.
The mate, for his part, gave no indication of harboring
the assault that Billy had made upon him other than to
assign the most dangerous or disagreeable duties of the ship