They submitted
to insults innumerable; but at last Sukey was one morning assailed by a
brutal sailor whom he knocked down. Two other sailors were guilty of a
similar offence, and all four were put under arrest. Fernando was
shocked and alarmed for his friend, and hastened to ascertain the facts
concerning the charge.
"I couldn't help it," declared Sukey, whom he found in irons. "Plague
take him! he hit me twice before I knocked him down. I didn't want to be
in the game."
The culprits could expect nothing but a flogging at the captain's
pleasure. Toward evening of the next day, they were startled by the
dread summons of the boatswain and his mates at the principal
hatchway,--a summons that sent a shudder through every manly heart in
the frigate:
"_All hands witness punishment, ahoy_!"
The hoarseness of the cry, its unrelenting prolongation, it being caught
up at different points and sent to the lowest depths of the ship,
produced a most dismal effect upon every heart not calloused by long
familiarity with it. However much Fernando desired to absent himself
from the scene that ensued, behold it he must; or, at least, stand near
it he must; for the regulations compelled the attendance of the entire
ship's company, from the captain himself to the smallest boy who
struck the bell.
At the summons, the crew crowded round the mainmast.
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