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V have helped us in the least; so we shut our mouths and killed the signalman next morning. His own chief, the hawk-nosed Yeoman of Signals, flung him bound to the executioner, saying: 'He ought to have known, sir; he ought to have known.' So he was boiled, scraped, and sand-papered, his hair was cut and his number was taken; after which he went forward and heard precisely what the lower deck thought of him. Then a visiting Captain's galley hanging on to the gangway rubbed it in gracefully and casually, and a fat beef-boat condoled with us ironically, and the whaler (see Note V.) heard all about it next time she went sailing without an officer in the stern-sheets. It was most annoying, but can't you see how easily this sort of accident may happen?