new paragraph; you hear him reciting the involved, but
comprehensive and clear arrangement of the sentence, detailing all
possible particulars of the offence described, and you breathlessly
await, whether _that_ clause also is going to be concluded by the
discharge of the terrible minute-gun. When, lo! it again booms on your
ear--_shall suffer death!_ No reservations, no contingencies; not the
remotest promise of pardon or reprieve; not a glimpse of commutation of
the sentence; all hope and consolation is shut out--_shall suffer
death!_ that is the simple fact for you to digest; and it is a tougher
morsel, believe White-Jacket when he says it, than a forty-two-pound
cannon-ball.

But there is a glimmering of an alternative to the sailor who infringes
these Articles. Some of them thus terminates: "_Shall suffer death, or
such punishment as a court-martial shall adjudge_." But hints this at a
penalty still more serious? Perhaps it means "_death, or worse
punishment_."

Your honours of the Spanish Inquisition, Loyola and Torquemada!
produce, reverend gentlemen, your most secret code, and match these
Articles of War, if you can. Jack Ketch, _you_ also are experienced in
these things! Thou most benevolent of mortals, who standest by us, and
hangest round our necks, when all the rest of this world are against
us--tell us, hangman, what punishment is this, horribly hinted at as
being worse than death? Is it, upon an empty stomach, to read the
Articles of War every morning, for the term of one's natural life? Or
is it to be imprisoned in a cell, with its walls papered from floor to
ceiling with printed copies, in italics, of these Articles of War?

But it needs not to dilate upon the pure, bubbling milk of human
kindness, and Christian charity, and forgiveness of injuries which
pervade this charming document, so thoroughly imbued, as a Christian
code, with the benignant spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. But as it
is very nearly alike in the foremost states of Christendom, and as it
is nationally set forth by those states, it indirectly becomes an index
to the true condition of the present civilization of the world.

As, month after month, I would stand bareheaded among my shipmates, and
hear this document read, I have thought to myself, Well, well,
White-Jacket, you are in a sad box, indeed. But prick your ears, there
goes another minute-gun. It admonishes you to take all bad usage in
good part, and never to join in any pu