neck a minute or two. Now, ain't them there the
facts o' the case?"

"Ay, ay, Ned; you're right, bo'; that's just exactly how't was," was the
reply.

"Nevertheless," answered Captain Arnold sternly, "you are as much
murderers, every one of you, as if you had hanged the man--as you seemed
about to do--or had taken him up and flung him over the side with your
own hands. You _drove_ him to his death; his blood is upon your hands;
and you will individually be called upon to answer for your accursed
deed, if not in this world, certainly in the next."

The men cowered like whipped hounds before the captain's denunciation,
which they knew in their inmost souls to be just; for an instant they
stood appalled before the awful conviction that they were indeed
_murderers_, none the less guilty because their crime was unintentional;
and, but for the swift intervention of Rogers, they would there and
then, in their horror and remorse, have yielded up possession of the
ship, and returned to their duty. But the boatswain, taking in at a
glance the critical state of affairs, and fully realising his own
perilous position as the ring-leader in the mutiny, rallied his men by
exclaiming--

"There now, belay all that, you Arnold; we wants none of _your_
preachin', and, what's more, we won't have it. And, shipmates, don't
you take no notice of what he says; we never _meant_ to take the second
mate's life; we'd ha' stopped him from drownin' hisself if we could; and
so it's just all gammon to talk about our bein' his--his--murderers.
Now march the pris'ners down into the fo'c's'le again; clap the bilboes
on 'em; shut down the scuttle upon 'em; and then come aft into the
cabin, all hands, and we'll `freshen the nip.'"

This proposal to "freshen the nip"--or take another glass or two of
grog--was eagerly welcomed by the mutineers, who felt that they _must_
have something to dispel those qualms of conscience which so greatly
disturbed them; and in another quarter of an hour they were all--with
the exception of two men at the wheel and one on the poop, who was
supposed to be acting as lookout--once more assembled round the
saloon-table, busily endeavouring to drown their sense of guilt in a
flood of liquor.

The ladies--who had long before effected a retreat to their own
state-rooms, where they had locked themselves in--were for some time
allowed to remain unmolested; but when the libations in which the
mutineers liberally indulged had