ou suppose that on that account you will be able to get
your own way, or successfully oppose me, you will discover that you
never made a greater mistake in your lives. You may shirk your work, or
perform it in a slovenly, unseamanlike manner as long as you please, but
I warn you, one and all, that I have made up my mind to convert you from
the lazy, skulking, mutinous set of tinkers and tailors you now are,
into the smartest and best-disciplined crew in the service; and by
Heaven I will do it too, even though it should be necessary to
administer a daily flogging to every man in the ship. There are some
few of you who are a shade worse--a shade more idle, and lubberly, and
insubordinate--than the rest; you, Jones, are one; you, Hoskings, are
another, and you, Thomson, Kirkpatrick, Davis, Morrison, I have my eye
upon all of you; you are booked, every man of you, for an early taste of
the cat; and I assure you that when it comes it will be a sharp one.
You shall learn that, in laying yourselves out to oppose your captain,
you have undertaken a task altogether beyond your strength. You shall
have neither rest nor peace day or night, henceforward, until I have
completely quelled your present rebellious spirit and brought you to a
proper condition of subordination and smartness. So now, my lads, you
know what you have to expect, and, whatever happens, you will never be
able to say that I did not give you due warning. Pipe down!"

The men turned away and dispersed in perfect silence. Usually after the
administration of a lecture, however severe, some irrepressible joker
might be detected with his head cocked on one side and his face with a
waggish grin upon it, turned toward his next neighbour, evidently giving
utterance to some jocular comment upon the lately-delivered address, as
he gave his breeches the true nautical hitch forward and abaft; but on
this occasion there was nothing of the kind, the indignation and disgust
aroused by the skipper's arrogant and threatening speech appeared to be
altogether too overpowering to allow of the escape of a humorous idea to
the surface.

The silence of the men was so complete as to be, to my mind, ominous,
whilst their bearing was marked by that peculiar air of defiant
recklessness which is to be observed in individuals who feel that
Fortune has at length done her very worst for them. How much longer, I
wondered, would they thus tamely suffer themselves to be hectored and
browb