“So now you have put your tongue in gaskets,” he commented, after a pause.  “Too bad you didn’t do it before.  A long tongue is a very bad habit, my lad, and I do not allow my hands to have bad habits.  I correct them—­so!”

He struck me then, not a heavy, stunning blow, but a short-armed, slashing uppercut, which ripped the flesh of my cheek, and sent me stumbling backwards against the mate’s body.  I took that blow meekly, I took Fitzgibbon’s harder blow meekly.  I stood there and let the two of them pummel me, and knock me down and kick me, and I made no show of resistance.  I buried my head in my arms, and drew up my knees, and let them work their will on me.

Oh, it was a cruel dressing down they gave me!  My face became raw meat, my body a mass of shooting pains.  I took it meekly.  I tried to guard my vitals, and my addled, star-riddled wits clung to the one idea—­“I must not lose my temper!”

I took my medicine.  I did not lift a hand against them.  I grovelled on the deck like a cur, and did not fight back.

It was hard to behave like that.  It was the hardest thing I had ever done—­keeping my temper, and taking that beating without show of resistance.  I was a fighting animal; never before in my life had I tamely turned the other cheek.  Long afterwards I came to realize that those few moments, during which I lay on the deck and felt their boots thud into my flesh, were educative moments of vital importance in my growth into manhood.  I was learning self-control; it was being literally kicked into me.  It was a lesson I needed, no doubt—­but, oh, it was a bitter, bitter lesson.

They gave over their efforts, finally.  I had not much wit left in me, but I heard the captain’s voice, faintly, as though he were at a distance, instead of bending over me.

“There’s no fight in this rat,” he said.  “Might as well boot him off the poop, Mister, and let him crawl into his hole.  He’s not dangerous, and the ship needs him as beef.”

No sooner said than done.  I had obligingly saved them the trouble of booting me very far, for I had been inching myself forward ever since the onslaught.  When the captain spoke, I was almost at the head of the ladder to the main deck—­an instant after he spoke, I was lying on the main deck at the foot of the poop ladder, and all the stars in the universe were dancing before my eyes.

I got dizzily to my hands and knees, and then to my feet, and staggered forward.  Captain Swope’s soft voice followed me.

“Next time reef your tongue before you open your mouth!” he called.

I made my way into the foc’sle, and my watchmates grabbed me, and swabbed and kneaded my hurts, and swore their sympathy.  My injuries were not very severe—­some nasty gashes about the head and face, and innumerable bruises upon the body.  Fortunately I was in no way disabled.  My bones were intact.  I was in far better case, they told me, than poor Holy Joe.  He was lying in his bunk unconscious, that very moment; he had a broken arm, and most of his teeth were gone.