"

"To your duty, captain of the main-top!" said the Captain, rather
stiffly. He wished to neutralise somewhat the effect of the Commodore's
condescension. Besides, he had much rather the Commodore had been in
his cabin. His presence, for the time, affected his own supremacy in
his ship. But Jack was nowise cast down by the Captain's coldness; he
felt safe enough; so he proceeded to offer his acknowledgments.

"'Kind gentlemen,'" he sighed, "your pains are registered where every
day I turn the leaf to read'--Macbeth, valiant Commodore and
Captain!--what the Thane says to the noble lords, Ross and Angus."

And long and lingeringly bowing to the two noble officers, Jack backed
away from their presence, still shading his eyes with the broad rim of
his hat.

"Jack Chase for ever!" cried his shipmates, as he carried the grateful
news of liberty to them on the forecastle. "Who can talk to Commodores
like our matchless Jack!"

CHAPTER LII.

SOMETHING CONCERNING MIDSHIPMEN.

It was the next morning after matchless Jack's interview with the
Commodore and Captain, that a little incident occurred, soon forgotten
by the crew at large, but long remembered by the few seamen who were in
the habit of closely scrutinising every-day proceedings. Upon the face
of it, it was but a common event--at least in a man-of-war--the
flogging of a man at the gangway. But the under-current of
circumstances in the case were of a nature that magnified this
particular flogging into a matter of no small importance. The story
itself cannot here be related; it would not well bear recital: enough
that the person flogged was a middle-aged man of the Waist--a forlorn,
broken-down, miserable object, truly; one of those wretched landsmen
sometimes driven into the Navy by their unfitness for all things else,
even as others are driven into the workhouse. He was flogged at the
complaint of a midshipman; and hereby hangs the drift of the thing. For
though this waister was so ignoble a mortal, yet his being scourged on
this one occasion indirectly proceeded from the mere wanton spite and
unscrupulousness of the midshipman in question--a youth, who was apt to
indulge at times in undignified familiarities with some of the men,
who, sooner or later, almost always suffered from his capricious
preferences.

But the leading principle that was involved in this affair is far too
mischievous to be lightly dismissed.

In most cases, it would seem to be a c