He would start with the awarding of one dozen lashes, with the defaulter bound to an upright hatch cover, shirtless, with a wide leather sash round his middle to protect the man from errant strokes that might hit the kidneys or the buttocks. The Ship’s Surgeon, Snelling, would examine the man to determine if he was fit to suffer punishment. The crew would be assembled to bear witness and take heed from their shipmate’s pain. The Marines would form up to one side in the waist in full-dress kit and under arms. The Sailmaker would have fashioned a red baize draw-string bag, in which a fresh-made cat-o’-nine-tails was hidden. Lewrie would read the crime committed, cite the applicable section of the Articles of War, then ordain the punishment, and tell the Bosun and his Mates to “let the cat out of the bag” to administer that required dozen.
As the days went by, though, Lewrie could note that the names of the hands who’d been lashed did not appear again, except for the hardened few, who would commit the same petty crimes and suffer the ritual once more, with two dozen lashes for a second appearance.
* * *
“Thief! Thief! Git ’im!”
Lewrie was reclined in his collapsible deck chair on the poop, reading a novel and regally above it all, when that tumult began. He put the book aside and descended to the quarterdeck.
“What’s acting, Mister Harcourt?” he asked the watch officer.
“No idea, sir,” Harcourt said in his usual laconic, stand-offish manner. “I expect we shall see, shortly.”
Too bad officers can’t be flogged, Lewrie fumed to himself; I’m gettin’ tired o’ him. He’s skirtin’ damn’ close to the line o’ mute insubordination!
“Aha, sir,” Harcourt said, jutting his chin to the main hatchway as Baggett, the Master At Arms, and his Ship’s Corporals, Packer and Wray, came up from the upper gun deck to the weather deck, wrestling a burly, struggling hand with them. Just behind, a horde of men boiled onto the deck, threatening to beat the man.
“Thief, sir!” Baggett exclaimed as he spotted Lewrie at the front edge of the quarterdeck. “Landsman Clegg!”
Lewrie went down a ladderway to the waist to confront the man.
“Who did he steal from, and what did he steal?” he asked.
“From me, sir … Deavers,” the newest hand in Lewrie’s boat crew spoke up, red in the face with anger. “He took my snuff box!”
“Saw him do it, sir!” Crawley, the demoted Cox’n, accused.
“Saw him with it, sor!” Patrick Furfy chimed in.
“Let me see it,” Lewrie demanded, and Baggett fetched it out from a coat pocket. Lewrie was surprised to see a rather fine silver snuff box, ornately engraved, and with a wreathed plain oval on the top which bore the ornate initials JED. “Yours, Deavers?”
“My mother bought it for my father, James Edward Deavers, there on the top, sir,” Deavers explained, still fuming and looking daggers at Clegg. “He was a corn merchant, at Staines, ’til he went smash. It’s all I have of my parents.”
“It’s his for sure, sor,” Liam Desmond spoke up. “He messes with us, sor, and he’s showed us it, once, Deavers did.”
“Furfy, you say you saw Clegg with the snuff box?” Lewrie asked.
“Clegg, sor, he come aft near our mess, an’ knocked Deavers’s sea-bag off th’ peg,” Furfy began to relate.
“Saw him fumble it, and reach inside, sir,” Crawley interrupted.
“Only when spoken to, Crawley,” Baggett warned.
“No, no, it’s allowed, this once, Baggett,” Lewrie said.
“Aye, sir!” Baggett replied. “All piss and gaitors” stiff.
“You saw him take it,” Lewrie demanded of Crawley.
“He hung the sea-bag back up, like it was an accident, sir, but I saw a glint of metal in his hand when he did,” Crawley told him.
“And you then saw him with it, Furfy?” Lewrie pressed.
“Crawley gimme a jerk o’ th’ head, sor, sorta cutty-eyed, so I went forrud t’follow him, an’ I seen th’ snuff box a’bulgin’ in Clegg’s pocket. I cry out, ‘Hoy, what’s ’at ye got in yer pocket ’at ye took from Deavers’s sea-bag’, an’ then cried ‘thief’, sor,” Furfy stated. “’At woke up some o’ t’other lads up forrud, an’ we all took hold o’ him ’til th’ Master At Arms could take him, sor.”
A theft belowdecks was easily done, with half the crew on deek and on watch, and the other half catching up on their sleep. It was Clegg’s mis-fortune that the slop trousers issued by the Purser had no pockets, unlike officers’, and were sewn on to customise them at a later date during a “Make And Mend” day; they were usually flat to the original cloth, leaving little room inside in which to cram much. Even the small, rectangular bulk of a snuff box would stand out like a 12-pounder roundshot.
“And, what d’ye have t’say for yourself, Clegg?” Lewrie turned to the suspect.
“I staggered an’ knocked somebody’s sea-bag down, sir,” Clegg tried to explain, with a pleasant expression, somewhere between confident and wheedling. “But, I hung it back up an’ went on forrud, an’ nary a thing did I take from it, sir!”
“Then how did Deavers’s snuff box turn up in your trouser pocket?” Lewrie sternly asked.
“Never woz in me pocket, sir!” Clegg declared. “First I know, they’s all shoutin’ ‘thief’, jumpin’ me an’ pinnin’ me down, feelin’ me all over, an’ plantin’ it on me! Y’ask me, sir, I say that Furfy took it, thort better of it, an’ blamed me for it!”
“Crawley, where were you and Furfy when you saw the theft?” Lewrie asked.
“I was sittin’ at my mess table, sir, ’bout three messes forward o’ Deavers’s, larboard side,” Crawley told him, “and Furfy was just comin’ down the main ladderway, aft, nowhere near his own mess.”
“Yer lyin’, Crawley, you an’ t’other Capum’s pet, th’ both o’ ya,” Clegg snapped. “I never done it!”
“Seems pretty-much open and shut, to me,” Lewrie decided with a slow nod. “Clegg, I could hold a formal Mast later today, and we could repeat the testimonies, but … after hearing the evidence and the charge against you, I pronounce you guilty of violating Article the Thirtieth, of Robbery.”
God, I can recite by heart by now! Lewrie marvelled.
“‘All Robbery committed by any person in the Fleet shall be punished with Death, or otherwise, as a Court-Martial, upon Consideration of Circumstances, shall find meet,’” he recited.
Lewrie stressed “Death”, which made Clegg’s brutal face turn white.
“Since we can’t form a proper Court with only two Post-Captains, I can’t hang you, Clegg,” Lewrie told him. “I could give you an hundred lashes, but as I noted in the Punishment Book when first I came aboard, you’ve had more than your fair share, already. You are a Quota Man. From gaol, released upon your oath to serve your King. Am I right?”
“Aye, sir,” Clegg said, much subdued, and fearful of what was coming.
“Mister Terrell?” Lewrie called over his shoulder for the Bosun, sure that the ado would have drawn that worthy nearby.
“Aye, sir?” Terrell piped up in a gruff voice, with a touch of “hopeful” that his strong arm would soon be needed to administer the cat; perhaps the punishment would involve all his Mates, too, with each delivering a dozen by rotation.
“Pipe ‘All Hands On Deck’ to witness punishment,” Lewrie bade. “Mister Hillhouse?”
“Aye, sir?” the eldest Midshipman answered up.