An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

Wilfrid’s eyes came to mine.

‘It will depend upon how hard every man hits,’ said I; ‘the ducking is innocent enough. Yet I see nothing of cruelty in the sentence; and really the fellow not only requires to be punished, but to be terrified as well.’

‘The hands are waiting for me to tell ’em to begin, your honour,’ said Finn with a glance forward. ‘It’ll make the punishment too severe to keep the poor devil a-waiting for it.’

‘One moment,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, ‘did he offer any excuses?’

‘Why, sir, he said he was egged on with the desire to return to his mother and get off the sea which disagrees with his insides and affects his hintellectuals. He says he meant no more harm than that. Don’t believe he did, but it might have ended in some smothering trouble all the same. “I came as a walet,” says he, “and here now am I,” says he, “broke—just a ship’s dog, a filthy scullion,” says he, “when my true calling,” says he, “is that of gentleman’s gentleman.”’

‘But, confound him!’ cried Wilfrid, ‘it was he who left me; I did not dismiss him. He went forward of his own will.’

‘My dear Wilfrid, he is cracked,’ said I.

‘Get on, get on, and make an end of this, now, Finn,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, with a little colour of temper in each cheek. ‘I’m weary of the business, and want these decks cleared and quiet to the eye.’

The skipper promptly trudged forward, and sung out as he advanced. In a few moments most of the sailors had ranged themselves along the deck in a double line. Every man held a piece of rope in his hand—reef points they looked to me, though whether they had been cut for this special business or had been hunted for amidst raffle of the kind forward I cannot say. Meanwhile a couple of seamen handed buckets full of water along from a little pump in the head until every man had one at his feet. When these preparations were completed the brace of salts who had charge of Muffin suddenly whipped off his shirt, and laid bare his back, so that he stood in nothing but a pair of breeches, a very radish of a figure—his yellow anatomy glancing dully in the sunshine, whilst the ghastly pallor of his face was heightened yet by his plaster of coal-black hair, just as his inward terror was accentuated by the corkscrew-like writhing of his lean legs, the convulsive twitching of his arms, and the dismal rolling of his dead black, lustreless eyes. It was impossible not to feel sorry for the wretched creature. One felt that he was entitled, by virtue of the remarkable gift he had displayed, to a discipline of a more dignified sort than he was now to be subjected to. I laughed out, however, when Cutbill formed a procession. Absurdity could not have gone beyond the figure the great whiskered tarpaulin cut in his blanket and the canvas bag that served him as headgear as, making a sign, he tragically entered the double line of men, beating with his hands that Muffin and his two supporters should keep time with his strides. When Muffin was brought to the aftermost end of the rank of seamen Cutbill seized him by the neck and forced him to give us a bow. The two sailors who had conducted him to this point then posted themselves with the others, each of them picking up a rope’s end, whereupon Cutbill, twisting Muffin so as to force him to face the vessel’s forecastle, took a couple of strides backwards, extending his arms under his blanket to hinder Muffin from running forwards.

‘Lay on now!’ he hoarsely bawled, and then whack! whack! whack! whack! sounded upon the unhappy Muffin’s spine as rhythmically as the tapping of a land-crab’s claws upon a polished floor. Every fellow administered his single blow with a will, one or two spitting on their hands before their turn came. The sufferer writhed pitifully to the very first stroke, and to the fourth howled out like a dog. The sight half-sickened me, and yet I found myself laughing—though, I dare say, there was something of hysteric nervousness in my merriment—at the preposterous spectacle of the staggering, twitching, dodging, almost nude figure of Muffin, throwing out into strong relief the huge blanketed form of Cutbill, who, with arms extended, his head with its adornment of oakum nodding gravely from side to side, as if bestowing approbation on each man for the blow he dealt, strode backwards on majestic legs, carefully turning out his toes as though he were giving Muffin a lesson in dancing, and sliding along the lines of knotted, hairy faces, with the air of some court functionary marshalling the progress of royalty.