CHAPTER XXXIII.
A FLOGGING.
If you begin the day with a laugh, you may, nevertheless, end it with a sob and a sigh.
Among the many who were exceedingly diverted with the scene between the Down Easter and the Lieutenant, none laughed more heartily than John, Peter, Mark, and Antone--four sailors of the starboard-watch.

The same evening these four found themselves prisoners in the "brig," with a sentry standing over them.

They were charged with violating a well-known law of the ship--having been engaged in one of those tangled, general fights sometimes occurring among sailors.

They had nothing to anticipate but a flogging, at the captain's pleasure.
Toward evening of the next day, they were startled by the dread summons of the boatswain and his mates at the principal hatchway--a summons that ever sends a shudder through every manly heart in a frigate: "_All hands witness punishment, ahoy!_" The hoarseness of the cry, its unrelenting prolongation, its being caught up at different points, and sent through the lowermost depths of the ship; all this produces a most dismal effect upon every heart not calloused by long habituation to it.
However much you may desire to absent yourself from the scene that ensues, yet behold it you must; or, at least, stand near it you must; for the regulations enjoin the attendance of the entire ship's company, from the corpulent Captain himself to the smallest boy who strikes the bell.
"_All hands witness punishment, ahoy!_" To the sensitive seaman that summons sounds like a doom.

He knows that the same law which impels it--the same law by which the culprits of the day must suffer; that by that very law he also is liable at any time to be judged and condemned.