haughty and repelling motion with his arm, he spoke, and in a
voice that, if any change could be noted, was even pitched on a key less
high and threatening than common. But the lowest and the deepest of its
intonations reached the most distant ear, and no one who heard was left to
doubt its meaning.

"Mutiny!" he said, in a tone that strangely balanced between irony and
scorn; "open, violent, and blood-seeking mutiny! Are ye tired of your
lives, my men? Is there one, among ye all, who is willing to make himself
an example for the good of the rest? If there be, let him lift a hand, a
finger, a hair: Let him speak, look me in the eye, or dare to show that
life is in him, by sign, breath, or motion!"

He paused; and so general and absorbing was the spell produced by his
presence and his mien, that, in all that crowd of fierce and excited
spirits, there was not one so bold as to presume to brave his anger
Sailors and marines stood alike, passive, humbled and obedient, as faulty
children, when arraigned before an authority from which they feel, in
every fibre, that escape is impossible. Perceiving that no voice answered,
no limb moved, nor even an eye among them all was bold enough to meet his
own steady but glowing look, he continued, in the same deep and commanding
tone,--

"It is well: Reason has come of the latest; but, happily for ye all, it
has returned Fall back, fall back, I say; you taint the
quarter-deck."--The men receded a pace or two on every side of him.--"Let
those arms be stacked; it will be time to use them when I proclaim the
need. And you, fellows, who have been so bold as to lift a pike without an
order have a care they do not burn your hands."--A dozen staves fell upon
the deck together.--"Is there a drummer in this ship? let him appear!"

A terrified and cringing-looking being presented himself, having found his
instrument by a sort of desperate instinct.

"Now speak aloud, and let me know at once whether I command a crew of
orderly and obedient men, or a set of miscreants, that require some
purifying before I trust them."

The first few taps of the drum sufficed to tell the men they heard the
"beat to quarters." Without hesitating a reluctant moment, the crowd
dissolved, and each of the delinquents stole silently to his station; the
crew of the gun that had been turned inward managing to thrust it through
its port again, with a dexterity that might have availed them greatly in
time of combat. Th