Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/291

 for the surface of the ocean seemed to be covered with them.

On the 29th we passed floating fields of gulf-weed, some of them a mile in length. Our prisoner, the Fiji chief Vendovi, was failing rapidly in health. He had been very despondent since the death of Mr. Vanderford. All hands were busily engaged building "castles in the air," imagining what they would do when  they got paid off. As regards your humble servant, he had fully made up his mind not to ship again in the  navy. This was my sixth year, and I had had enough of the navy during that time to last me a lifetime. I had seen as good men as ever trod a ship’s deck, lashed  to the rigging — made spread eagles of — and flogged. Truly, "feeble man, clothed with a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as to make  the very angels weep."

Fifty years have passed, and how little reform has been made in the treatment of sailors! It is true Jack’s grog has been stopped, and flogging has been legally  abolished. Still, in this nineteenth century, the sailor is most tyrannically abused, as can be seen by reading the  reports in the daily papers. For instance, a naval officer — one high in authority — is court-martialed, and found guilty of abusing and threatening the lives of some of his men. The officer is sentenced to be put on the retired list for a year. This punishment in reality means a twelve months’ picnic on full pay. A merchant captain — a very small specimen of a man — knocks down one of his sailors with a handspike, and lashes another  to the rigging and flogs him. When the ship arrives in