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Poor Tommy Bigg, too, got more knocked about than ever. My blood used to boil as I saw the poor friendless little fellow kicked, and cuffed, and rope's-ended without mercy, day after day, and more than once I felt inclined to rush to his rescue, and to tell his tyrants what cruel brutes they were. In vain Mr Henley expostulated with Mr Grimes. He got only abused in return.
"No more do I," he snarled. "'Cross the sea to Ireland, eh? And no biscuit and water. Ah, you ought to be all rope's-ended. How came you on the rock?" I told him. "Lucky I saw you all standing on it white-skinned against the black rocks.
Certain references to the pugs put her on the lookout and she and the other women watched me; one of the brutes littered that night; I couldn't resist the temptation, and so fed the whole batch, mother and all, to the lion; in a minute had four furious women afoul of me, biting and clawing; sung out for help, and Shem and Japheth bore down and rescued me; Ham helped the women and made a majority for them; his mother had the jug, that's why; managed to floor him with a pump-brake, but they were still too many for us and chased us around decks till they got tired and sat down to cry; got to my room and began writing them down in the log when they started in again; my wife smashed the whiskey jug over my head then we all escaped on deck and went aloft; couldn't follow us, but sat down and said things Had a council of war, then Shem shinned over to the foremast and cut away all the jib halliards and sheets and halliards on the fore Ark had broached to in trough sea when Japheth left the wheel to help me, and had laid there with yards square and rolling considerable; women could stand that motion, but not a head sea, so now when she came up to the wind and began pounding up and down and drifting astern, they got qualmish and in twenty minutes were sprawled out helpless; Ham didn't know enough to take the wheel and throw her off, so we came down, tied the women hand and foot, and then went for Ham; triced him up and rope's-ended him till his nose bled; begged and howled, but had to take it and learn that mutiny is unsafe aboard my ship Kept her head to the sea till we had spliced and rove off the gear, then set canvas and squared away again Women got better; read the articles to them; were penitent and promised to behave, but before turning them loose we went on a pug hunt and passed two of them in to the lion; only one left now, but we haven't found it yet; women howled a good deal and called us heartless, cruel fiends that's all right.
That was very funny indeed, for Jim's shipmates observed that as he was bruised and rope's-ended more and more he lost all power of retaining his food, and everything he swallowed passed from him undigested. Jim succumbed to the wholesome, manly, hardening, maritime discipline of the good old times, and no one was hanged for murdering him.
The men say that if either you or your friend tell them on your words of honor that the Maltese is a liar, they will hand him up to be rope's-ended accordingly; but that if you won't, they have made up their minds to believe the boy." Here the captain paused and awaited my answer. I could give him none. I felt hopeless under our desperate emergency.
He made himself generally popular with the men by his good temper and jokes, and by bearing patiently the ill-treatment to which he was often subjected by the badly disposed among them. But though kicked, rope's-ended, and made to perform tasks which it was not his duty to do, he never complained or showed any vindictive feeling. His chief friend was Dan Tidy.
"Now, you know, if he wasn't a parson, d n me if I'd turn in to-night till I'd rope's-ended that lubber!" "As if I'd let you dirty your hands with such rubbish! I sent the note back to him with just one line, 'Such a fool as you are has no right to be a villain. There, David, there is your poor sister's life. Oh, what I went through for that man!
Dan was the principal sufferer, as, to say the truth, he ought to have been. He was rope's-ended for his pains. Next day the stevedores took the ship in to the stream, and the crew came on board. The assembling of the crew of a merchantman, in that day, was a melancholy sight.
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