“You’ll know d——d quick! Strip yourself; I don’t want to tear your clothes with my whip. I’m going to tear your black skin.”
Finding that pleading would be in vain, the lad fought madly, until overcome by three sturdy blacks who were called in to assist. They felled him to the ground and bound him with cords.
“Take him to the shed,” commanded the whipper. “String him up to a cross-beam. He’s to have twenty lashes to begin with, then he’s to be whipped until we have orders to stop.”
Strung up by his thumbs to the cross-beams, gashed, bleeding, every blow of the whip was torturing agony. The boy uttered not a groan. He had learned his lesson of endurance in the schools of the Indian stoic, and he bore his punishment without a murmur. But every stroke of the merciless lash was engraved on his heart in bleeding stripes that called for vengeance. In the midst of the scene Thomson strolled in.
“Very good,” he said, after viewing the work a moment. “Let him breathe a minute, boys, then ten more. Now, Judah, this is a taste of wholesome discipline you’re getting. You’ve got to be brung down. I’m going to do it if I have to have you whipped every month for a year. I’m goin’ to break your spirit and teach you a nigger’s place; an’ if your life’s wurth anything to you the quicker you learn your lesson the better. No more high-head carryin’, gentlemanly airs, and dictionary talk; breaking hosses in ain’t wuth a cent to a nigger,” he added with a malicious leer. “All right, boys, give him ten more,” and while they were being administered the monster stood by calmly smoking his cigar.
“Got grit,” said the whipper. “Ain’t whimpered.”
“Now, boys, ease up again while I finish my little speech to the gentleman.”
“You’ve got to learn to say ‘massa.’ It don’ matter what you can do nor how much you know, nor how handsome you think yourself, you ain’t one grain better than any other nigger on the plantation. If you forget this lesson, it’ll be the worse for you. Now, once more, boys,” he continued, turning to the whippers, “make it a dozen and smart ones to wind up with!”
All this had happened in the first year of captivity, and since that time Judah had apparently learned his place.