"Who did this?" I demanded.
"Nobody!" says he, gulping a sob.
"Who are you?"
"'Tween-decks boy."
"How old are you, child?"
At this he stared up at me out of his swollen eyes, then covering his face in ragged sleeve broke into convulsive sobbing.
"What now?" says I, drawing him beside me. "What now?"
"She used to call me 'child'—my mother—" and here his grief choked him. Now as I looked down upon this little, pitiful creature, I forgot my sickness in sudden, fierce anger.
"Boy," said I, "who's been flogging you—speak!"
"Red Andy," he gasped, "'e be always a' doin' of it 'e be—wish I was dead like my mother!"