dly murderers of
your officers; that you killed sleeping men; that you threw others,
still alive, overboard, and that you murdered the surgeons who had cured
the wounded, and tended the sick like brothers. I'll say that you
butchered one of my helpless messmates--a poor boy younger than myself;
I'll--!"

"Overboard with him--overboard!" exclaimed Hargraves, who had just cut
down the lieutenant, and seemed like a tiger, which having once tasted
blood, thirsts for more.

The midshipman, already fatigued and wounded, raised his weapon to
defend himself. Hargraves rushed at the boy, who in an instant
afterwards lay writhing at his feet.

"Heave the carcase overboard. It is the way some of us have been
treated, you know that, mates," he exclaimed, throwing the yet
palpitating form of the boy into the sea, when it was eagerly seized on
by the ravenous sharks, waiting for their prey supplied by the savage
cruelty of man. Many even of the mutineers cried, "Shame! shame!"
Hargraves turned fiercely round on them--

"Ye none of you cried shame when the captain did the same--cowards! why
did ye not do it then? Were the lives of our brave fellows of less
value than the life of that young cub?"

The men were silenced, but the eyes of many were opened, and they began
from that moment bitterly to repent the cruel deed of which they had
been guilty. Oh! if they could have recalled the dead, how gladly would
they have done so,--their officers, who, if they had sometimes acted
harshly, were brave men and countrymen; even the captain, tyrant as he
was, they wished that they could see once more on his quarter-deck, with
the dreadful scene which had been enacted wiped away; but the deed had
been done--no power could obliterate it. They had been participators in
the bloody work. It stood recorded against them in the imperishable
books of Heaven. Blood had been spilt, and blood was to cry out against
them and to demand a dreadful retribution.

The mutinous crew stood gazing stupidly at each other; the helm had been
deserted, the wind had fallen, the sails were flapping lazily against
the masts, and the ship's head was going slowly round and round towards
the different points of the compass. Hargraves and others felt that
something must be done; there was no safety for them while their frigate
floated on the broad ocean. What if they should fall in with another
British man-of-war? What account could they give of themselves?