The basting which followed was really worthy of the days when Captain Crowle, with his own hand, quelled a mutiny and drove the whole crew under hatches. The right hand at seventy was as vigorous as at forty. For my own part, I attempted no interference. The captain was wrathful but he had command of himself. If he added to the basting a running commentary of sea-going terms, signifying scorn and contempt, with the astonishment with which a sailor always regards presumption, it was only to increase the terror and the effect of the cudgelling. I am quite certain that he was resolved in his own mind when he should stop; that is to say, when the justice of the case would have been met and revenge would begin. And I hold myself excused for not preventing any portion of this commentary.
It was a poor, shrinking, trembling figure full of bruises and aches and pains that presently arose and slunk away. I should have felt sorry for him had he taken punishment like a man. Why, I would maroon any of my crew who would cry and grovel and snivel when tied up for his three dozen. It made one sick and ashamed to see him and to hear him, with his--
"Mercy, captain! Oh! Enough, good captain! Oh! captain, I confess. I deserve it all. Never again, captain. Oh! Forgiveness--forgiveness!" And so on. I say it made me sick and ashamed. When all was over I followed him to the garden gate. "Oh! Jack," he groaned. "You stood by and saw it all. I am a dead man. He shall be hanged for it. You are the witness. I am nothing but a bag of broken bones. Ribs and collar bones and skull. I am a poor, unfortunate, murdered man. I am done to death with a cudgel."
"Go home," I said. "You a man? You cry like a whipped cur. Murdered? Not you. Cudgelled you are, and well you deserved it. Go home and get brown paper and vinegar and tell all the town how you have been cudgelled for writing verses to a matchless maid. They will laugh, Sam Semple. They will laugh."
The captain went back to the parlour, somewhat flushed with the exercise.
"Justice," he said, "has been done, without the cart and the cat. My pipe, Jennifer, and the home-brewed. Molly, my dear, your very good health."
A day or two afterwards, we heard that Sam Semple had gone to London to make his fortune. He was carried thither by the waggon that once a week makes the journey to London, returning the following week. But when Sam Semple came back it was in a chaise, with much splendour, as in due course you shall hear. You shall also hear of the singular gratitude with which he repaid the captain for that wholesome correction.