‘Now, Jack,’ said Jerry, ‘here’s the mark for you; let’s see what pith you have got in your muscles.’
So the seaman addressed flourished his rope cudgel aloft, and then brought it down upon the naked back of the Portuguese, with a blow which echoed over the deck, and raised a broad white-coloured bar of flesh, which started up from the shoulder almost to the loin. The sufferer staggered under the weight of the stroke, and immediately all his back, except just where the scourge fell, turned to a burning red; but he uttered no sound.
‘Very well struck, Jack,’ said the mate, and then dragged the prisoner forward to receive the second blow. Ten minutes passed over at least, before the Portuguese had got through one-half of his punishment, by arriving in the bows of the ship; for Jerry prolonged the torture by stopping to joke with each man before he struck, and advising him to lay it on well. The whole scene was a very brutal one, and I would gladly have left the deck if I could. There was no escape, however, and I saw the poor wretch flogged up one side of the ship and down the other, each blow given by the full strength of an unwearied arm. When the prisoner had completed his miserable walk, he was trembling all over; great drops of sweat were running down his face, and his back, although the skin was not actually cut, was a mass of ugly-coloured swellings.
‘He will faint in a minute,’ said Rumbold, ‘and cheat Jerry of the finishing stroke’
But, as if the mate had been aware of his danger, he hurriedly flourished his scourge round his head, so as to give it the full swing of his brawny arm, and then brought it down upon the sufferer with a buffet which might have broken the spine of a bull, and which drove the wretch who received it flat upon the deck, where he lay stark and motionless.
‘Well,’ said Le Chiffon Rouge, who, being captain, had not personally interfered in the punishment, ‘it is to be hoped that Monsieur Vasco hath had a lesson upon the disadvantages of drawing knives upon comrades.’
‘And upon the disadvantages of making enemies of more powerful men than himself,’ whispered Rumbold. ‘I dare say the fellow is a rascal, but he was flogged, not for cutting open his shipmate’s head, but for preventing the mate from getting a fourth wife.’
‘Here, men,’ roared Jerry, as he twitched up the head of the prostrate man by the hair, and then allowed it to fall with a thump upon the deck, ‘slush this carrion with a bucketfull of salt water, and then tumble him down the hatchway. I warrant he don’t lie on his back in his hammock for a month of Sundays.’
These orders were speedily carried into effect, and the Portuguese having been taken below, the maintopsail was filled, and the ship again stood upon her course.
In the course of the day, Jerry and Nixon came up to me together, and proposed, very civilly, that, as I was a sailor, I should join the ship for the cruise; in which case, they told me, that I should have my regular share of the prize-money as if I had been on board since they went to sea, about three months ago. Of course I had nothing for it but to agree to the proposal, although I loathed the whole set among whom I had been thus so strangely thrown. ‘Oh,’ thought I, ‘things were different on board the “Will-o’-the-Wisp,” with Stout Jem for a commander, and a hearty set of fellows under him, as honest as they were brave.’ But there was no help for it, and so my name was duly enrolled in the great book of the ‘Saucy Susan.’