ion was an agreeable excitement
to this class of officer or captain. If some of the villainy
committed in the name of the law at sea were to be written,
it would be a revolting revelation of wickedness, of
unheard-of cruelty. Small cabin-boys who had not seen more
than twelve summers were good sport for frosty-blooded
scoundrels to rope's-end or otherwise brutally use, because
they failed to do their part in stowing a royal or in some
other way showed indications of limited strength or lack of
knowledge. The barbarous creed of the whole class was to
lash their subjects to their duties. A little fellow, well
known to myself, who had not reached his thirteenth year,
had his eyes blacked and his little body scandalously
maltreated because he had been made nervous by continuous
bullying, and did not steer so well as he might have done
had he been left alone. It is almost incredible, but it is
true, some of these rascals would at times have men hung up
by their thumbs in the mizen rigging for having committed
what would be considered nowadays a most trivial offence.

One gentleman, well known in his time by the name of Bully
W----, stood on the poop of the square-rigged ship
_Challenge_, and _shot_ a seaman who was at work on the main
yardarm! It was never known precisely why he did it; but it
was well known that had he not made his exit from the cabin
windows, and had he not received assistance to escape, he
would have been lynched by a furious public. This man once
commanded a crack, square-rigged clipper called the _Flying
Cloud_. His passages between New York and San Francisco were
a marvel to everybody. He was credited, as many others like
him have been, with having direct communication with the
devil, and is said never to have voluntarily taken canvas
in. He was one of those who used to lock tacks and sheets,
so that if the officers were overcome by fear they could not
shorten canvas. His fame spread until it was considered an
honour to look upon him, much less to know him. He became
the object of adoration, and perhaps his knowledge of this
swelled his conceit, so that he came to believe that even
the shooting of his seamen was not a murderous, but a
permissible act, so far as _he_ was concerned. But this man
was only one among scores like him.

There was once a famous captain of a well-known Australian
clipper, a slashing, dare-devil fellow, who made the
quickest passages to and from Australia on record. But a