had constantly sailed with him could be depended on. The
rest would remain with him and do their duty only so long as they
thought it their interest. And though he did his utmost to keep up
strict discipline, he was obliged to humour them more than he would have
been justified in doing under other circumstances. Though he might have
used the lash,--very common in those days,--to flog men was repugnant to
his feelings, and he preferred trying to keep them in order by kindness.
Unhappily, many of them were of too brutal a nature to understand his
object, so they fancied that he treated them as he did from timidity.
Old Jacob Shobbrok urged stronger measures when some of the men refused
to turn out to keep their watch, or went lazily about their work.

"We shall have the masts whipped out of the ship, if we don't trice up
some of these fellows before long," he observed one day to the captain.

"Wait a bit, Jacob," answered Captain Tredeagle; "I will try them a
little longer; but you can just let them know that if any of them again
show a mutinous disposition, they will be flogged as surely as they are
living men."

"They don't understand threats, captain," answered Jacob. "There's
nothing like the practical teaching the cat affords with fellows of this
description. I'll warn them, however, pretty clearly; and if that don't
succeed, I must trust to you to show them that you will stand it no
longer."

Jacob did not fail to speak to the men as he promised, and for a time
they went on better; but the spirit of insubordination still existed
among them, and gave the good captain much concern.

The boatswain, Jonah Capstick, who ought to have been the first to
preserve discipline, was among the worst. It was the first voyage he
had made with Captain Tredeagle, to whom he had been recommended as a
steady man. One of his mates, Tom Hulk,--well named, for he was a big
hulking ruffian,--was quite as bad, and with several others supported
the boatswain.

Alice knew nothing of what was going forward, though Walter suspected
that things were not quite right.

The great delight of Alice, as the ship entered the tropics, was to
watch the strange fish which swam about the ship as she glided calmly
on; to observe the ocean bathed in the silvery light of the moon, or the
sun as it sank into its ocean bed, suffusing a rich glow over the sky
and waters.

She and Walter were one day standing on deck together, when, looking up,