his capture.

It so happened, that on the very day on which Peters was brought on
board and put into irons, the purser's servant was discovered to have in
his possession the watch that had been lost. Thus far the character of
Peters was reinstated; and as he had declared, at the time of his
capture, that the unjust punishment which he had received had been the
motive of his desertion, the captain was strongly urged by the officers
to overlook an offence which had everything to be offered in its
extenuation. But Captain A--- was fond of courts-martial; he imagined
that they added to his consequence, which certainly required to be
upheld by adventitious aid. Moreover, the feeling, too often pervading
little minds, that of a dislike taken to a person because you have
injured him, and the preferring to accumulate injustice rather than to
acknowledge error, had more than due weight with this weak man. A
court-martial was held, and Peters was sentenced to death; but, in
consideration of circumstances, the sentence was mitigated to that of
being "flogged round the fleet."

Mitigated! Strange vanity in men, that they should imagine their own
feelings to be more sensible and acute than those of others; that they
should consider that a mitigation in favour of the prisoner, which, had
they been placed in his situation, they would have declared an
_accumulation_ of the punishment. Not a captain who sat upon that
court-martial but would have considered, as Peters did, that death was
by far the more lenient sentence of the two. Yet they meant well--they
felt kindly towards him, and acknowledged his provocations; but they
fell into the too common error of supposing that the finer feelings,
which induce a man to prefer death to dishonour, are only to be
recognised among the higher classes; and that, because circumstances may
have placed a man before the mast, he will undergo punishment, however
severe, however degrading,--in short, every "ill that flesh is heir
to,"--in preference to death.

As the reader may not, perhaps, be acquainted with the nature of the
punishment to which Peters was sentenced, and the ceremonies by which it
is attended, I shall enter into a short description of it.

A man sentenced to be flogged round the fleet receives an equal part of
the whole number of lashes awarded, alongside each ship composing that
fleet. For instance, if sentenced to three hundred lashes, in a fleet
composed of ten sail, he