A FLOGGING.
If you begin the day with a laugh, you may, nevertheless, end it with a
sob and a sigh.
Among the many who were exceedingly diverted with the scene between the
Down Easter and the Lieutenant, none laughed more heartily than John,
Peter, Mark, and Antone—four sailors of the starboard-watch. The same
evening these four found themselves prisoners in the “brig,” with a
sentry standing over them. They were charged with violating a
well-known law of the ship—having been engaged in one of those tangled,
general fights sometimes occurring among sailors. They had nothing to
anticipate 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
ever sends a shudder through every manly heart in a frigate:
“_All hands witness punishment, ahoy!_”
The hoarseness of the cry, its unrelenting prolongation, its being
caught up at different points, and sent through the lowermost depths of
the ship; all this produces a most dismal effect upon every heart not
calloused by long habituation to it.
However much you may desire to absent yourself from the scene that
ensues, yet behold it you must; or, at least, stand near it you must;
for the regulations enjoin the attendance of the entire ship’s company,
from the corpulent Captain himself to the smallest boy who strikes the
bell.
“_All hands witness punishment, ahoy!_”
To the sensitive seaman that summons sounds like a doom. He knows that
the same law which impels it—the same law by which the culprits of the
day must suffer; that by that very law he also is liable at any time to
be judged and condemned. And the inevitableness of his own presence at
the scene; the strong arm that drags him in view of the scourge, and
holds him there till all is over; forcing upon his loathing eye and
soul the sufferings and groans of men who have familiarly consorted
with him, eaten with him, battled out watches with him—men of his own
type and badge—all this conveys a terrible hint of the omnipotent
authority under which he lives. Indeed, to such a man the naval summons
to witness punishment carries a thrill, somewhat akin to what we may
impute to the quick and the dead, when they shall hear the Last Trump,
that is to bid them all arise in their ranks, and behold the final
penalties inflicted upon the sinners of our race.
But it must not be imagined that to all men-of-war’s-men this summons
conveys such poignant emotions; but it is hard to decide whether one
should be glad or sad that this is not the case; whether it is grateful
to know that so much pain is avoided, or whether it is far sadder to
think that, either from constitutional hard-heartedness or the
multiplied searings of habit, hundreds of men-of-war’s-men have been
made proof against the sense of degradation, pity, and shame.
As if in sympathy with the scene to be enacted, the sun, which the day
previous had merrily flashed upon the tin pan of the disconsolate Down
Easter, was now setting over the dreary waters, veiling itself in
vapours. The wind blew hoarsely in the cordage; the seas broke heavily
against the bows; and the frigate, staggering under whole top-sails,
strained as in agony on her way.
“_All hands witness punishment, ahoy!_”
At the summons the crew crowded round the main-mast; multitudes eager
to obtain a good place on the booms, to overlook the scene; many
laughing and chatting, others canvassing the case of the culprits; some
maintaining sad, anxious countenances, or carrying a suppressed
indignation in their eyes; a few purposely keeping behind to avoid
looking on; in short, among five 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 main-mast; the First Lieutenant in advance, and
the surgeon, whose special duty it is to be present at such times,
standing close by his side.
Presently the Captain came forward from his cabin, and stood in the
centre of this solemn group, with a small paper in his hand. That paper
was the daily report of offences, regularly laid upon his table every
morning or evening, like the day’s journal placed by a bachelor’s
napkin at breakfast.
“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.
“You John, you Peter, you Mark, you Antone,” said the Captain, “were
yesterday found fighting on the gun-deck. Have you anything to say?”
Mark and Antone, two steady, middle-aged men, whom I had often admired
for their sobriety, replied that they did not strike the first blow;
that they had submitted to much before they had yielded to their
passions; but as they acknowledged that they had at last defended
themselves, their excuse was overruled.
John—a brutal bully, who, it seems, was the real author of the
disturbance—was about entering into a long extenuation, when he was cut
short by being made to confess, irrespective of circumstances, that he
had been in the fray.
Peter, a handsome lad about nineteen years old, belonging to the
mizzen-top, looked pale and tremulous. He was a great favourite in his
part of the ship, and especially in his own mess, principally composed
of lads of his own age. That morning two of his young mess-mates had
gone to his bag, taken out his best clothes, and, obtaining the
permission of the marine sentry at the “brig,” had handed them to him,
to be put on against being summoned to the mast. This was done to
propitiate the Captain, as most captains love to see a tidy sailor. But
it would not do. To all his supplications the Captain turned a deaf
ear. Peter declared that he had been struck twice before he had
returned a blow. “No matter,” said the Captain, “you struck at last,
instead of reporting the case to an officer. I allow no man to fight on
board here but myself. I do the fighting.”
“Now, men,” he added, “you all admit the charge; you know the penalty.
Strip! Quarter-masters, are the gratings rigged?”
The gratings are square frames of barred wood-work, sometimes placed
over the hatchways. One of these squares was now laid on the deck,
close to the ship’s bulwarks, and while the remaining preparations were
being made, the master-at-arms assisted the prisoners in removing their
jackets and shirts. This done, their shirts were loosely thrown over
their shoulders.
At a sign from the Captain, John, with a shameless leer, advanced, and
stood passively upon the grating, while the bare-headed old
quarter-master, with grey hair streaming in the wind, bound his feet to
the cross-bars, and, stretching out his arms over his head, secured
them to the hammock-nettings above. He then retreated a little space,
standing silent.
Meanwhile, the boatswain stood solemnly on the other side, with a green
bag in his hand, from which, taking four instruments of punishment, he
gave one to each of his mates; for a fresh “cat” applied by a fresh
hand, is the ceremonious privilege accorded to every man-of-war
culprit.
At another sign from the Captain, the master-at-arms, stepping up,
removed the shirt from the prisoner. At this juncture a wave broke
against the ship’s side, and clashed the spray over his exposed back.
But though the air was piercing cold, and the water drenched him, John
stood still, without a shudder.
The Captain’s finger was now lifted, and the first boatswain’s-mate
advanced, combing out the nine tails of his _cat_ with his hand, and
then, sweeping them round his neck, brought them with the whole force
of his body upon the mark. Again, and again, and again; and at every
blow, higher and higher rose the long, purple bars on the prisoner’s
back. But he only bowed over his head, and stood still. Meantime, some
of the crew whispered among themselves in applause of their ship-mate’s
nerve; but the greater part were breathlessly silent as the keen
scourge hissed through the wintry air, and fell with a cutting, wiry
sound upon the mark. One dozen lashes being applied, the man was taken
down, and went among the crew with a smile, saying, “D——n me! it’s
nothing when you’re used to it! Who wants to fight?”
The next was Antone, the Portuguese. At every blow he surged from side
to side, pouring out a torrent of involuntary blasphemies. Never before
had he been heard to curse. When cut down, he went among the men,
swearing to have the life of the Captain. Of course, this was unheard
by the officers.
Mark, the third prisoner, only cringed and coughed under his
punishment. He had some pulmonary complaint. He was off duty for
several days after the flogging; but this was partly to be imputed to
his extreme mental misery. It was his first scourging, and he felt the
insult more than the injury. He became silent and sullen for the rest
of the cruise.
The fourth and last was Peter, the mizzen-top lad. He had often boasted
that he had never been degraded at the gangway. The day before his
cheek had worn its usual red but now no ghost was whiter. As he was
being secured to the gratings, and the shudderings and creepings of his
dazzlingly white back were revealed, he turned round his head
imploringly; but his weeping entreaties and vows of contrition were of
no avail. “I would not forgive God Almighty!” cried the Captain. The
fourth boatswain’s-mate advanced, and at the first blow, the boy,
shouting “_My God! Oh! my God!_” writhed and leaped so as to displace
the gratings, and scatter the nine tails of the scourge all over his
person. At the next blow he howled, leaped, and raged in unendurable
torture.
“What are you stopping for, boatswain’s-mate?” cried the Captain. “Lay
on!” and the whole dozen was applied.
“I don’t care what happens to me now!” wept Peter, going among the
crew, with blood-shot eyes, as he put on his shirt. “I have been
flogged once, and they may do it again, if they will. Let them look for
me now!”
“Pipe down!” cried the Captain, and the crew slowly dispersed.
Let us have the charity to believe them—as we do—when some Captains in
the Navy say, that the thing of all others most repulsive to them, in
the routine of what they consider their duty, is the administration of
corporal punishment upon the crew; for, surely, not to feel scarified
to the quick at these scenes would argue a man but a beast.
You see a human being, stripped like a slave; scourged worse than a
hound. And for what? For things not essentially criminal, but only made
so by arbitrary laws.