"My God! oh! my God!" shouted Sukey, and he writhed and leaped, until he displaced the gratings, scattering the nine-tails of the scourge all over his person. At the next blow, he howled, leaped and raged in unendurable agony.
"What the d---l are you stopping for?" cried the captain as the boatswain's-mate halted. "Lay on!" and the whole dozen were applied, though poor Sukey fainted at the tenth stroke.
Reader, this was on an English war vessel,--the vessel of a nation professing a high state of civilization. We blush to say it, it was no better on an American man-of-war, if nautical writers of high authority are to be believed, and, even to-day, the brute often holds a commission in the American army and navy. Although flogging is of the past, punishment equally severe is inflicted. The necessities of discipline are taken advantage of by men without hearts. An American naval officer in Washington City told the author that it was a common thing for officers on an American man-of-war to swing the hammock of the sailor or middy whom they disliked, where he would have all the damp and cold, ending in consumption and death. If this be true, it is far more brutal than flogging. Congressional investigations are usually farces. Congressmen place their friends in the army and navy, and their investigations usually result in the triumph of their friends.
For several days, Sukey was too ill to leave his hammock. "I don't want to get well," the poor boy said. "I want to die. I never want to see home or mother again after that."
"Faith, me lad, live but to kill the d---d captain," suggested Terrence.
"I would live a thousand years to do that."
There was a negro named Job on the vessel, who was a cook. He early formed a liking for the three. He stole the choicest dainties from the officers' table for the sick youth.
"I ain't no Britisher," he declared. "Dar ain't no Angler Saxon blood in dese veins, honey, an' I thank de good Lawd for dat. I know what it am to be flogged. Golly, dey flog dis chile twice already. Nex' time, I spect dat sumfin' am a-gwine to happen."
"When and where were you impressed?" Fernando asked.
"I war wid Cap'n Parson on de Dover, den de Sea Wing came, an' de leftenant swear dis chile am a Britisher, and he tuk me away. Den me an' Massa St. Mark, de gunner, were transferred to de Macedonian."