Chapter 70 - Page 2

adjudge_." But hints this at a penalty still more serious?
Perhaps it means "_death, or worse punishment_."

Your honours of the Spanish Inquisition, Loyola and Torquemada!
produce, reverend gentlemen, your most secret code, and match
these Articles of War, if you can. Jack Ketch, _you_ also are
experienced in these things! Thou most benevolent of mortals, who
standest by us, and hangest round our necks, when all the rest of
this world are against us--tell us, hangman, what punishment is
this, horribly hinted at as being worse than death? Is it, upon
an empty stomach, to read the Articles of War every morning, for
the term of one's natural life? Or is it to be imprisoned in a
cell, with its walls papered from floor to ceiling with printed
copies, in italics, of these Articles of War?

But it needs not to dilate upon the pure, bubbling milk of human
kindness, and Christian charity, and forgiveness of injuries
which pervade this charming document, so thoroughly imbued, as a
Christian code, with the benignant spirit of the Sermon on the
Mount. But as it is very nearly alike in the foremost states of
Christendom, and as it is nationally set forth by those states,
it indirectly becomes an index to the true condition of the
present civilization of the world.

As, month after month, I would stand bareheaded among my
shipmates, and hear this document read, I have thought to myself,
Well, well, White-Jacket, you are in a sad box, indeed. But prick
your ears, there goes another minute-gun. It admonishes you to
take all bad usage in good part, and never to join in any public
meeting that may be held on the gun-deck for a redress of
grievances. Listen:

Art. XIII. "If any person in the navy shall make, or attempt to
make, any mutinous assembly, he shall, on conviction thereof by a
court martial, suffer death."

Bless me, White-Jacket, are you a great gun yourself, that you so
recoil, to the extremity of your breechings, at that discharge?

But give ear again. Here goes another minute-gun. It indirectly
admonishes you to receive the grossest insult, and stand still
under it:

Art. XIV. "No private in the navy shall disobey the lawful orders
of his superior officer, or strike him, or draw, or offer to
draw, or raise any weapon against him, while in the execution of
the duties of his office, on pain of death."

Do not hang back there by the bulwarks, White-Jacket; come up to
the mark once more; for here goes still another minute-gun, which
admonishes you never to be caught napping:

Part of Art. XX. "If any person in the navy shall sleep upon his
watch, he shall suffer death."

Murderous! But then, in time of