136 WHALING 



'' It appears that William Humphries has been accused guilty 

 of a treacherous and base act, in loading a pistol for the purpose 

 of shooting Mr. Payne and myself. He having been tried, the 

 jury will now give in their verdict, guilty or not guilty. If 

 guilty he shall be hanged to a studding-sail boom rigged out 

 eight feet upon the foreyard; but if he is found not guilty. 

 Smith and Kidder shall be hanged upon the aforementioned 

 gallows." 



It sounded well to those who were not in the secret, but it 

 marked the end of Humphries. Comstock and Payne had 

 decided on his fate the night before, and had secretly instructed 

 the jury to return a verdict of guilty. 



They took the luckless Negro's watch from him, seated him 

 on the rail forward, covered his face with a cap, put the rope 

 round his neck, and ordered all hands to tally on. Then they 

 told him that, if he had anything to say, he had fourteen seconds 

 in which to say it. 



"Little did I think," he began, "I was born to come to 

 this " 



Comstock struck the ship's bell, and they ran him up to the 

 studding-sail boom. 



After cutting him down and sinking his body with a blubber 

 hook, they searched his chest and found in it sixteen dollars, 

 which he himself had hopefully stolen from the captain's trunk 

 less than three days before. 



Having thus concluded Humphries's earthly affairs with neat 

 celerity, Comstock read the laws that he had formulated to 

 govern the survivors of the mutiny, and ordered every man to 

 sign them. Here an odd distinction was made; the mutineers 

 set black seals by their names; the others, blue and white seals. 

 This precious document, conceived with a devilish ingenuity 

 that challenges those who write the most sanguinary fiction, 

 provided that any man who saw a sail and neglected to report it 

 immediately, or any man who refused to fight a ship, should be 

 tied hand and foot, and boiled to death in the try-pots of boiling 

 oil. It represented the high-water mark of Comstock's im- 

 agination and statesmanship. 



