eaten? how much longer go quietly to the gangway and submit to be
severely flogged for the most trifling offences? Then, too, I felt
indignant at the unscrupulous way in which the skipper had
misrepresented the nature of the officers' recent interview with him,
and had conveyed the impression that they were rather favouring than
deprecating the severity of his discipline. Such conduct struck me as
being not only barbarously tyrannical, but also in the highest degree
impolitic; for what could any man of sense expect but that, by
persistence in it, he would make good men bad, and bad men worse. And
if the men were to turn restive in the presence of an enemy--which was,
to my mind, not unlikely, though I never anticipated anything worse--
what would be the result? The whole aspect of affairs looked
unsatisfactory in the extreme, and when I turned into my hammock that
night it was to indulge in sundry very gloomy forebodings before I
finally dropped off to sleep; though Heaven knows how far I was from
guessing at the scenes of horror of which the frigate was to be the
theatre before another twenty-four hours had passed over my head.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE MUTINY.

During the night a little air of wind sprang up from the eastward which
carried us out clear of the Mona Passage, and when day dawned we found
ourselves with a clear horizon all round the ship. At noon we wore
round to retrace our steps, and by sunset we were within a dozen miles
of the spot we had occupied at the same hour on the previous evening.

The day, for a wonder, had passed almost pleasantly; there had been no
flogging; Captain Pigot had scarcely showed himself on deck, except for
a few minutes after breakfast and again at noon; and the officers of the
watches, glad to be freed from his obnoxious presence, had been careful
not to unnecessarily hurry and badger the men whilst carrying on the
duty of the ship. The only circumstance which, to my mind, seemed
disquieting, was the unusual demeanour of the men, who performed their
work, steadily enough indeed, but in a moody, unnatural silence,
wearing, meantime, a gloomy, preoccupied air, whilst they at the same
time--at least so it appeared to me--seemed to be, one and all, in a
restless, anxious, watchful frame of mind, as though they were in
momentary expectation of something happening. I could not at all
understand this state of things, which was something quite new, for,
notwithstanding the s