n pins flying like
sand on a squally day--but never a match to our old man. It never let
up from the Hook to the Farallones; and the last man was dropped not
sixteen hours ago. Packet rats our men were, and as tough a crowd as
ever sand-bagged a man's head in; but they looked sick enough when the
captain started in with his fancy shooting."

"O, he's done up," observed the other. "He won't go to sea no more."

"You make me tired," retorted his superior. "If he gets ashore in one
piece and isn't lynched in the next ten minutes, he'll do yet. The
owners have a longer memory than the public; they'll stand by him; they
don't find as smart a captain every day in the year."

"O, he's a son of a gun of a fine captain; there ain't no doubt of
that," concurred the other, heartily. "Why, I don't suppose there's been
no wages paid aboard that Gleaner for three trips."

"No wages?" I exclaimed, for I was still a novice in maritime affairs.

"Not to sailor-men before the mast," agreed the mate. "Men cleared out;
wasn't the soft job they maybe took it for. She isn' the first ship that
never paid wages."

I could not but observe that our pace was progressively relaxing; and
indeed I have often wondered since whether the hurry of the start were
not intended for the gallery alone. Certain it is at least, that when we
had reached the police office, and the mates had made their deposition,
and told their horrid tale of five men murdered, some with savage
passion, some with cold brutality, between Sandy Hook and San Francisco,
the police were despatched in time to be too late. Before we arrived,
the ruffian had slipped out upon the dock, had mingled with the crowd,
and found a refuge in the house of an acquaintance; and the ship was
only tenanted by his late victims. Well for him that he had been
thus speedy. For when word began to go abroad among the shore-side
characters, when the last victim was carried by to the hospital, when
those who had escaped (as by miracle) from that floating shambles,
began to circulate and show their wounds in the crowd, it was strange
to witness the agitation that seized and shook that portion of the
city. Men shed tears in public; bosses of lodging-houses, long inured
to brutality, and above all, brutality to sailors, shook their fists at
heaven: if hands could have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner,
his shrift would have been short. That night (so gossip reports) he was
headed up in a barrel and