Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/234

. Sweeney was very conceited and disagreeable. At all times, whether drunk or sober, he would curse everything American, using such expressions as "the bloody  ship," "the bloody grub," "the bloody Yankee tars,"  "the bloody Stars and Stripes," "the bloody Yankee commodore," and so on. He was no sailor, and was as useless as a spare pump on board, and the ship’s crew requested  the commodore to discharge him from the ship and the  expedition.

The court-martial sentenced the men to receive a certain number of lashes on their bare backs, with the cat- o’-nine-tails. The ship’s launch was rigged with a half- deck and gallows. A number of marines, with the boatswain and his three mates, were appointed to guard  the prisoners and inflict the punishment. The launch was towed by another boat alongside the Peacock, Porpoise, and Vincennes, when the rigging was manned and  the men flogged, one after another.

The culprits were lashed to the shrouds by their wrists, with a piece of spun-yarn, and by their ankles to a grating, with a shot-box between their feet. When the order was given, "Boatswain’s mate, do your duty," one of the  quarter-gunners, with his thumb and finger, removed the  shirt which had been placed on the man’s back, with  the sleeves over his shoulders. The boatswain’s mate then drew the lines of the cat through his fingers, raised  them above his head, and let them fall upon the man’s  back.

Riley received sixteen lashes, Sweeney eight, and Ward a baker’s dozen, thirteen. The eagle buttons were then cut from Sweeney’s clothes, and he, with his bag and