Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/596

 when wrecked, before she was stranded, lost his right hand.

But when the mutilation of members was found to be injudicious, for "afterwards a man was good for nothing," this punishment was removed from the law of Catalonia passed in the year 1354. The ordinance, however, inflicting the loss of the tongue and the ears, and running the gauntlet of sticks and stones along the deck, was not abrogated for some centuries, whilst hanging a man at the yard-arm was for the first time introduced. The laws of the North, terribly severe in the case of a sailor who struck with a knife at the master of a ship, or who merely raised any arms against him, enacted that the offender should have his hand fastened to the mast with the knife which he had used, so that he could only liberate himself by tearing away his own hand by main force, leaving a portion of the member adhering to the mast. Any quarrels among the sailors at Genoa which led to loss of life were rigorously punished, and almost invariably with death. Pilots were most severely dealt with. If any one of them had engaged to carry a vessel into a harbour on the penalty of losing his head, he was decapitated if he failed to do so; in the case of shipwreck he was liable to a similar punishment, unless, indeed, he was rich enough to pay for the loss occasioned by his ignorance and carelessness. Sometimes a man, who cut the cable maliciously so as to cause the loss of the ship confided to his care, was punished by being impaled.

But the pale, the whip, the cat-o'-nine tails, the mutilation of members, the cutting out the tongue,