Not only were the officers of the Macedonian brutal; but the crew was made up of a motley class of human beings of every class of viciousness and brutality.

“Now boys, if ye want to kape out of trouble,” said Terrence, “do’nt ye get into any fights with thim divils, or ye’ll be brought up to the quarter-deck and flogged.”

His advice was appreciated, and both Fernando and Sukey did their best to avoid trouble with any of their quarrelsome neighbors.  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.  Many, eager to obtain a good place, got on the booms to overlook the scene.  Some were laughing and chatting, others canvassing the case of the culprits.  Some maintaining sad, anxious countenance, or carrying a suppressed indignation in their eyes.  A few purposely kept behind, to avoid looking on.  In short, among three or four hundred men, there was every possible shade of character.  All the officers, midshipmen included, stood together in a group on the starboard side of the mainmast.  The first lieutenant was a little in advance, and the surgeon, whose special duty it was to be present at such times, stood close at his side.  Presently the captain came forward from his cabin and took his place in the centre of the group, with a small paper in his hand.  That paper was the daily report of offenses, regularly laid upon his table every morning or evening.

“Master-at-arms, bring up the prisoners,” he said.  A few moments elapsed, during which the captain, now clothed in his most dreadful attributes, fixed his eyes severely upon the crew, when suddenly a lane formed through the crowd of seamen, and the prisoners advanced—­the master-at-arms, rattan in hand, on one side, and an armed marine on the other,—­and took up their stations at the mast.