he know our hearts, I
take him to be of that generous nature that he would feel even for us on whom in
this military necessity so heavy a compulsion is laid.«
    With that, crossing the deck, he resumed his place by the sashed port-hole,
tacitly leaving the three to come to a decision. On the cabin's opposite side
the troubled court sat silent. Loyal lieges, plain and practical, though at
bottom they dissented from some points Captain Vere had put to them, they were
without the faculty, hardly had the inclination to gainsay one whom they felt to
be an earnest man, one, too, not less their superior in mind than in naval rank.
But it is not improbable that even such of his words as were not without
influence over them, came home to them less than his closing appeal to their
instinct as sea-officers. He forecasted the practical consequences to discipline
(considering the unconfirmed tone of the fleet at the time), if violent killing
at sea by a man-of-war's man of a superior in grade were allowed to pass for
aught else than a capital crime, and one demanding prompt infliction of the
penalty.
    Not unlikely they were brought to something more or less akin to that
harassed frame of mind which in the year 1842 actuated the commander of the U.S.
brig-of-war Somers to resolve, under the so-called Articles of War, Articles
modelled upon the English Mutiny Act, to resolve upon the execution at sea of a
midshipman and two petty officers as mutineers designing the seizure of the
brig. Which resolution was carried out though in a time of peace and within not
many days' sail of home. An act vindicated by a naval court of inquiry
subsequently convened ashore. History, and here cited without comment. True, the
circumstances on board the Somers were different from those on board the
Indomitable. But the urgency felt, well warranted or otherwise, was much the
same.
    Says a writer whom few know, »Forty years after a battle it is easy for a
non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another
thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the
obscuring smoke of it. Much so with respect to other emergencies involving
considerations both practical and moral, and when it is imperative promptly to
act. The greater the fog the more it imperils the steamer, and speed is put on
though at the hazard of running somebody down. Little ween the snug card-players
in the cabin of the responsibilities