will receive thirty alongside of each ship.

A launch is fitted up with a platform and shears. It is occupied by the
unfortunate individual, the provost-marshal, the boatswain, and his
mates, with their implements of office, and armed marines stationed at
the bow and stern. When the signal is made for punishment, all the
ships in the fleet send one or two boats each, with crews cleanly
dressed, the officers in full uniform, and marines under arms. These
boats collect at the side of the ship where the launch is lying, the
hands are turned up, and the ship's company are ordered to mount the
rigging, to witness that portion of the whole punishment which, after
the sentence has been read, is inflicted upon the prisoner. When he has
received the allotted number of lashes, he is, for the time, released,
and permitted to sit down, with a blanket over his shoulders, while the
boats, which attend the execution of the sentence, make fast to the
launch, and tow it to the next ship in the fleet, where the same number
of lashes are inflicted with corresponding ceremonies;--and thus he is
towed from one ship to another until he has received the whole of his
punishment.

The severity of this punishment consists not only in the number of
lashes, but in the peculiar manner in which they are inflicted; as,
after the unfortunate wretch has received the first part of his sentence
alongside of one ship, the blood is allowed to congeal, and the wounds
partially to close, during the interval which takes place previously to
his arrival alongside of the next, when the cat again subjects him to
renewed and increased torture. During the latter part of the
punishment, the suffering is dreadful; and a man who has undergone this
sentence is generally broken down in constitution, if not in spirits,
for the remainder of his life.

Such was the punishment inflicted upon the unfortunate Peters; and it
would be difficult to decide, at the moment when it was completed, and
the blanket thrown over his shoulders, whether the heart or the back of
the fainting man were the more lacerated of the two.

Time can heal the wounds of the body, over which it holds its empire;
but those of the soul, like the soul itself, spurn his transitory sway.

Peters, from that moment, was a desperate man. A short time after he
had undergone his sentence, the news of the mutiny at Spithead was
communicated; and the vacillation and apprehensions of the Admiralty,
and