But he dashed the thought aside as folly.

His duty was to make war on rebels, not to win them over by blandishments.
So he set his face like steel to the work, and made the name of monitor a caution in Templeton.

And, it is fair to say, he was well backed up.
Cresswell, Cartwright, Swinstead, and others of their sort rallied round him, and, at the risk of their own popularity, and sometimes against their better judgment, took up the rule of iron.

Even the hermit Freckleton came out of his den now and then on the side of justice.
The cad Bull, who had neither the wit nor the temper to play a double part, threw up his monitorship in disgust and went over to the enemy, carrying with him one or two of the empty heads of the Fifth.

Pledge alone looked on the whole revolution as a joke.
But even Pledge found it hard to make a case against the new rulers; for, if their severity was great, their justice was still greater.