Dick Secker replied mildly but firmly.  He reckoned the crew were, in a general way, able to take care of themselves.  They could do their duty, whatever it was; and they were not afraid of sailing with any man that ever trod a deck.

After a few days at sea they were able to form a correct estimate of their master mariner.  He never came on deck absolutely drunk, but he was saturated with rum to the very marrow of his bones.  A devil of cruelty, hate, and murder glared from his eyes, and his blasphemies could come from no other place but the lowest depths of the bottomless pit.  The mate was comparatively a gentle and inoffensive lamb.  He did not curse and swear more than was considered decent and proper on board ship, did his duty, and avoided quarrels.

One day Blogg was rating the cook in his usual style when the latter made some reply, and the captain knocked him down.  He then called the mate, and with his help stripped the cook to the waist and triced him up to the mast on the weather side.  This gave the captain the advantage of a position in which he could deliver his blows downward with full effect.  Then he selected a rope’s end and began to flog the cook.  At every blow he made a spring on his feet, swung the rope over his head, and brought it down on the bare back with the utmost force.  It was evident that he was no ’prentice hand at the business, but a good master flogger.  The cook writhed and screamed, as every stroke raised bloody ridges on his back; but Blogg enjoyed it.  He was in no hurry.  He was like a boy who had found a sweet morsel, and was turning it over in his mouth to enjoy it the longer.  After each blow he looked at the three seamen standing near, and at the man at the helm, and made little speeches at them.  “I’ll show you who is master aboard this ship.”  Whack!  “That’s what every man Jack of you will get if you give me any of your jaw.”  Whack!  “Maybe you’d like to mutiny, wouldn’t you?” Whack!  The blows came down with deliberate regularity; the cook’s back was blue, black, and bleeding, but the captain showed no sign of any intention to stay his hand.  The suffering victim’s cries seemed to inflame his cruelty.  He was a wild beast in the semblance of a man.  At last, in his extreme agony, the cook made a piteous appeal to the seamen: 

[Illustration 2]

“Mates, are you men?  Are you going to stand there all day, and watch me being flogged to death for nothing?”

Before the next stroke fell the three men had seized the captain; but he fought with so much strength and fury that they found it difficult to hold him.  The helmsman steadied the tiller with two turns of the rope and ran forward to assist them.  They laid Blogg flat on the deck, but he kept struggling, cursing, threatening, and calling on the mate to help him; but that officer took fright, ran to his cabin in the deckhouse, and began to barricade the door.