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Theft was generally punished with flogging, but in serious cases the thief was forced to run the gauntlet, between two rows of sailors all armed with thin knotted cords. Ducking from the bowsprit end, towing in a rope astern, and marooning, were also practised as punishments for the pilferer. For sleeping on watch there was a graduated scale. First offenders were soused with a bucket of water.
For several minutes I pondered that question; and slowly I came to the conclusion that, short of crime, or that unlikely event, marooning, it was not possible. Never, never try as we might could any single one of us be quite in the position of one of those whose approaching pauperisation my distant relative had so vehemently deplored. We were already pauperised.
Not only did he make it himself, but he persuaded his old captain to join with him. And now fairly began that series of bold and lawless depredations which have made his name so justly famous, and which placed him among the very greatest of marooning freebooters.
It had been his first intention to escort T. Morgan Carey to the office of the now defunct Desert Development Company and lock him up there for the good of his soul but a more convenient means of marooning his enemy now presented itself. The door to the janitor's room was open; an electric light burned within, and from the keyhole of the half open door a bunch of keys was suspended.
First of all upon the list of pirates stands the bold Captain Avary, one of the institutors of marooning. Him we see but dimly, half hidden by the glamouring mists of legends and tradition. Others who came afterward outstripped him far enough in their doings, but he stands pre-eminent as the first of marooners of whom actual history has been handed down to us of the present day.
But whether he had attempted the destruction of the three other boys by "marooning" them upon the rocks as their parents firmly believed or whether he had himself withdrawn from their company simply because he did not like them, was never known. Any further attempt to improve his education by the roughing gregarious process was, however, abandoned.
"Why, dad, I haven't heard you say anything like that before," said Cub, with a curiously inquiring look at his father. "What do you mean by that?" "I don't know," was the reply. "Maybe it's our remarks about Crusoe, buccaneers, marooning, and walking the plank that worked on my mind and set me to thinking about outlaws.
Thus our good Noah Webster gives us the dry bones, the anatomy, upon which the imagination may construct a specimen to suit itself. It is thence that the marooners took their name, for marooning was one of their most effective instruments of punishment or revenge.
The men have been talking about her and, many of them, favour not the trouble of marooning those on board of her. So, say most of us, let's get what we can from her, and then quickly rid ourselves of her one way or another." "'Tis well!" cried Bonnet, "we can riddle her hull and sink her." "Wi' the neebours on board?" asked Greenway. Captain Bonnet scowled blackly.
This man is possibly the sole survivor of a shipwrecked crew; but, as there seems, so far as we can see at present, to be no trace of others being there, I should be more inclined to think that he has been marooned. Marooning is, of course, a very common practice, particularly among pirates, and, in my opinion, it is one of the most cruel forms of punishment ever conceived by the brain of man.
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