long-boat, and all the ship's boats are lowered also, and each ship in
harbour sends a boat manned by marines to attend. Then, with the master-
at-arms and the ship's surgeon, the boat is cast off. The boatswain's
mate begins the floggin', and the boat rows away to the half-minute bell,
the drummer beatin' the rogue's march. From ship to ship the long-boat
goes, and the punishment of floggin' is repeated. If he faints, he gets
wine or rum, or is taken back to his ship to recover. When his back is
healed he goes out to get the rest of his sentence. Very few ever live
through it, or if they do it's only for a short time. They'd better have
taken the hangin' that was the alternative. Even a corpse with its back
bare of flesh to the bone has received the last lashes of a sentence, and
was then buried in the mud of the shore with no religious ceremony.

"Mind you, there's many a man gets fifty lashes that don't deserve them.
There's many men in the fleet that's stirred to anger at ill-treatment,
until now, in these days, the whole lot is ready to see the thing
through--to see the thing through--by heaven and by hell!"

The pockmarked face had taken on an almost ghastly fervour, until it
looked like a distorted cartoon-vindictive, fanatical; but Dyck, on the
edge of the river of tragedy, was not ready to lose himself in the stream
of it.

As he looked round the ship he felt a stir of excitement like nothing he
had ever known, though he had been brought up in a country where men were
by nature revolutionists, and where the sword was as often outside as
inside the scabbard. There was something terrible in a shipboard
agitation not to be found in a land-rising. On land there were a
thousand miles of open country, with woods and houses, caves and cliffs,
to which men could flee for hiding; and the danger of rebellion was less