144 WHALING 



men on board her were arrested, pending an examination, after 

 which they refitted the ship and returned to Nantucket, under 

 command of one Captain King. They reached their home port 

 on November 21, 1824, and were again examined, before Judge 

 Hussey, and were all acquitted except Joseph Thomas, and re- 

 leased under bonds of $300 each as witnesses. Thomas, whose 

 guilt was clearly indicated, was sent to Boston to be given an- 

 other hearing. 



As Thomas entered the story, so he goes out of it, an unreal, 

 inscrutable figure. He moves through the old narratives 

 without passion and, for the most part, without speech. When 

 and where he joined the crew, I do not know. His name does 

 not appear on the crew list, nor is he mentioned as one of those 

 who were shipped at the Sandwich Islands to replace the 

 deserters. He was insolent and he was flogged — seized up to 

 the rigging, with the crew standing by, and lashed with a 

 rope's end till his back dripped blood. But even then, when he 

 was the immediate occasion of mutiny and murder, he remained 

 negative and impersonal. Still silent — still insolent, it is im- 

 plied — he was carried back to Boston. Never, so far as report 

 shows, did he manifest concern about his fate. "Joseph 

 Thomas,'' say the Boston newspapers of December 8, and 

 December 9, 1824, "one of the crew of the ship Globe, was 

 examined on Tuesday before Judge Davis, and on the evidence 

 offered was fully committed to take his trial at the May term 

 of the Circuit Court, on charge of mutiny and murder on board 

 said vessel." 



There all traces of him end. Could he have died in jail before 

 the day of his trial? His flogging introduced a remarkable chap- 

 ter in the history of whaling; but the man himself is as imper- 

 sonal and mysterious as Bede's sparrow. 



Thus is concluded the story of the Globe, For a while, it was 

 one of the famous stories of New England; now, at the end of 

 a hundred years, it appears to be nearly forgotten. Yet I 

 venture to prophesy that never, so long as people read our old 

 stories of the sea, will it be completely lost. 



