The morning sun, bright and fierce, looked down upon a curious sight. In
a stone-yard was a little group of persons--Troke, Burgess, Macklewain,
Kirkland, and Rufus Dawes.
Three wooden staves, seven feet high, were fastened together in the form
of a triangle. The structure looked not unlike that made by gypsies to
boil their kettles. To this structure Kirkland was bound. His feet were
fastened with thongs to the base of the triangle; his wrists, bound
above his head, at the apex. His body was then extended to its fullest
length, and his white back shone in the sunlight. During his tying up he
had said nothing--only when Troke pulled off his shirt he shivered.
“Now, prisoner,” said Troke to Dawes, “do your duty.”
Rufus Dawes looked from the three stern faces to Kirkland's white back,
and his face grew purple. In all his experience he had never been asked
to flog before. He had been flogged often enough.
“You don't want me to flog him, sir?” he said to the Commandant.
“Pick up the cat, sir!” said Burgess, astonished; “what is the meaning
of this?” Rufus Dawes picked up the heavy cat, and drew its knotted
lashes between his fingers.
“Go on, Dawes,” whispered Kirkland, without turning his head. “You are
no more than another man.”
“What does he say?” asked Burgess.
“Telling him to cut light, sir,” said Troke, eagerly lying; “they all
do it.” “Cut light, eh! We'll see about that. Get on, my man, and look
sharp, or I'll tie you up and give you fifty for yourself, as sure as
God made little apples.”
“Go on, Dawes,” whispered Kirkland again. “I don't mind.”
Rufus Dawes lifted the cat, swung it round his head, and brought its
knotted cords down upon the white back.
“Wonn!” cried Troke.
The white back was instantly striped with six crimson bars. Kirkland
stifled a cry. It seemed to him that he had been cut in half.
“Now then, you scoundrel!” roared Burgess; “separate your cats! What do
you mean by flogging a man that fashion?”
Rufus Dawes drew his crooked fingers through the entangled cords, and
struck again. This time the blow was more effective, and the blood
beaded on the skin.
The boy did not cry; but Macklewain saw his hands clutch the staves
tightly, and the muscles of his naked arms quiver.
“Tew!”
“That's better,” said Burgess.
The third blow sounded as though it had been struck upon a piece of raw
beef, and the crimson turned purple.
“My God!” said Kirkland, faintly, and bit his lips.
The flogging proceeded in silence for ten strikes, and then Kirkland
gave a screech like a wounded horse.
“Oh!...Captain Burgess!...Dawes!...Mr. Troke!...Oh, my God!... Oh!
oh!...Mercy!...Oh, Doctor!...Mr. North!...Oh! Oh! Oh!”
“Ten!” cried Troke, impassively counting to the end of the first twenty.
The lad's back, swollen into a lump, now presented the appearance of a
ripe peach which a wilful child had scored with a pin. Dawes, turning
away from his bloody handiwork, drew the cats through his fingers twice.
They were beginning to get clogged a little.
“Go on,” said Burgess, with a nod; and Troke cried “Wonn!” again.
Roused by the morning sun streaming in upon him, Mr. North opened
his bloodshot eyes, rubbed his forehead with hands that trembled, and
suddenly awakening to a consciousness of his promised errand, rolled
off the bed and rose to his feet. He saw the empty brandy bottle on
his wooden dressing-table, and remembered what had passed. With shaking
hands he dashed water over his aching head, and smoothed his garments.
The debauch of the previous night had left the usual effects behind it.
His brain seemed on fire, his hands were hot and dry, his tongue clove
to the roof of his mouth. He shuddered as he viewed his pale face and
red eyes in the little looking-glass, and hastily tried the door. He had
retained sufficient sense in his madness to lock it, and his condition
had been unobserved. Stealing into the sitting-room, he saw that the
clock pointed to half-past six. The flogging was to have taken place
at half-past five. Unless accident had favoured him he was already too
late. Fevered with remorse and anxiety, he hurried past the room where
Meekin yet slumbered, and made his way to the prison. As he entered the
yard, Troke called “Ten!” Kirkland had just got his fiftieth lash.
“Stop!” cried North. “Captain Burgess, I call upon you to stop.”
“You're rather late, Mr. North,” retorted Burgess. “The punishment is
nearly over.” “Wonn!” cried Troke again; and North stood by, biting his
nails and grinding his teeth, during six more lashes.
Kirkland ceased to yell now, and merely moaned. His back was like a
bloody sponge, while in the interval between lashes the swollen flesh
twitched like that of a new-killed bullock. Suddenly, Macklewain saw his
head droop on his shoulder. “Throw him off! Throw him off!” he cried,
and Troke hurried to loosen the thongs.
“Fling some water over him!” said Burgess; “he's shamming.”
A bucket of water made Kirkland open his eyes. “I thought so,” said
Burgess. “Tie him up again.”
“No. Not if you are Christians!” cried North.
He met with an ally where he least expected one. Rufus Dawes flung down
the dripping cat. “I'll flog no more,” said he.
“What?” roared Burgess, furious at this gross insolence.
“I'll flog no more. Get someone else to do your blood work for you. I
won't.”
“Tie him up!” cried Burgess, foaming. “Tie him up. Here, constable,
fetch a man here with a fresh cat. I'll give you that beggar's fifty,
and fifty more on the top of 'em; and he shall look on while his back
cools.”
Rufus Dawes, with a glance at North, pulled off his shirt without a
word, and stretched himself at the triangles. His back was not white
and smooth, like Kirkland's had been, but hard and seamed. He had been
flogged before. Troke appeared with Gabbett--grinning. Gabbett liked
flogging. It was his boast that he could flog a man to death on a place
no bigger than the palm of his hand. He could use his left hand equally
with his right, and if he got hold of a “favourite”, would “cross the
cuts”.
Rufus Dawes planted his feet firmly on the ground, took fierce grasp on
the staves, and drew in his breath. Macklewain spread the garments of
the two men upon the ground, and, placing Kirkland upon them, turned to
watch this new phase in the morning's amusement. He grumbled a little
below his breath, for he wanted his breakfast, and when the Commandant
once began to flog there was no telling where he would stop. Rufus Dawes
took five-and-twenty lashes without a murmur, and then Gabbett “crossed
the cuts”. This went on up to fifty lashes, and North felt himself
stricken with admiration at the courage of the man. “If it had not been
for that cursed brandy,” thought he, with bitterness of self-reproach,
“I might have saved all this.” At the hundredth lash, the giant paused,
expecting the order to throw off, but Burgess was determined to “break
the man's spirit”.
“I'll make you speak, you dog, if I cut your heart out!” he cried. “Go
on, prisoner.”
For twenty lashes more Dawes was mute, and then the agony forced from
his labouring breast a hideous cry. But it was not a cry for mercy, as
that of Kirkland's had been. Having found his tongue, the wretched man
gave vent to his boiling passion in a torrent of curses. He shrieked
imprecation upon Burgess, Troke, and North. He cursed all soldiers
for tyrants, all parsons for hypocrites. He blasphemed his God and his
Saviour. With a frightful outpouring of obscenity and blasphemy, he
called on the earth to gape and swallow his persecutors, for Heaven to
open and rain fire upon them, for hell to yawn and engulf them quick.
It was as though each blow of the cat forced out of him a fresh burst of
beast-like rage. He seemed to have abandoned his humanity. He foamed,
he raved, he tugged at his bonds until the strong staves shook again; he
writhed himself round upon the triangles and spat impotently at Burgess,
who jeered at his torments. North, with his hands to his ears, crouched
against the corner of the wall, palsied with horror. It seemed to him
that the passions of hell raged around him. He would fain have fled, but
a horrible fascination held him back.
In the midst of this--when the cat was hissing its loudest--Burgess
laughing his hardest, and the wretch on the triangles filling the air
with his cries, North saw Kirkland look at him with what he thought a
smile. Was it a smile? He leapt forward, and uttered a cry of dismay so
loud that all turned.
“Hullo!” says Troke, running to the heap of clothes, “the young 'un's
slipped his wind!”
Kirkland was dead.
“Throw him off!” says Burgess, aghast at the unfortunate accident;
and Gabbett reluctantly untied the thongs that bound Rufus Dawes.
Two constables were alongside him in an instant, for sometimes newly
tortured men grew desperate. This one, however, was silent with the
last lash; only in taking his shirt from under the body of the boy, he
muttered, “Dead!” and in his tone there seemed to be a touch of
envy. Then, flinging his shirt over his bleeding shoulders, he walked
out--defiant to the last.
“Game, ain't he?” said one constable to the other, as they pushed him,
not ungently, into an empty cell, there to wait for the hospital guard.
The body of Kirkland was taken away in silence, and Burgess turned
rather pale when he saw North's threatening face.
“It isn't my fault, Mr. North,” he said. “I didn't know that the lad was
chicken-hearted.” But North turned away in disgust, and Macklewain and
Burgess pursued their homeward route together.
“Strange that he should drop like that,” said the Commandant.
“Yes, unless he had any internal disease,” said the surgeon.
“Disease of the heart, for instance,” said Burgess.
“I'll post-mortem him and see.”
“Come in and have a nip, Macklewain. I feel quite qualmish,” said
Burgess. And the two went into the house amid respectful salutes from
either side. Mr. North, in agony of mind at what he considered the
consequence of his neglect, slowly, and with head bowed down, as one
bent on a painful errand, went to see the prisoner who had survived. He
found him kneeling on the ground, prostrated. “Rufus Dawes.”
At the low tone Rufus Dawes looked up, and, seeing who it was, waved him
off.
“Don't speak to me,” he said, with an imprecation that made North's
flesh creep. “I've told you what I think of you--a hypocrite, who stands
by while a man is cut to pieces, and then comes and whines religion to
him.”
North stood in the centre of the cell, with his arms hanging down, and
his head bent.
“You are right,” he said, in a low tone. “I must seem to you a
hypocrite. I a servant of Christ? A besotted beast rather! I am not come
to whine religion to you. I am come to--to ask your pardon. I might have
saved you from punishment--saved that poor boy from death. I wanted to
save him, God knows! But I have a vice; I am a drunkard. I yielded to
my temptation, and--I was too late. I come to you as one sinful man to
another, to ask you to forgive me.” And North suddenly flung himself
down beside the convict, and, catching his blood-bespotted hands in his
own, cried, “Forgive me, brother!”
Rufus Dawes, too much astonished to speak, bent his black eyes upon the
man who crouched at his feet, and a ray of divine pity penetrated his
gloomy soul. He seemed to catch a glimpse of misery more profound than
his own, and his stubborn heart felt human sympathy with this erring
brother. “Then in this hell there is yet a man,” said he; and a
hand-grasp passed between these two unhappy beings. North arose, and,
with averted face, passed quickly from the cell. Rufus Dawes looked at
his hand which his strange visitor had taken, and something glittered
there. It was a tear. He broke down at the sight of it, and when the
guard came to fetch the tameless convict, they found him on his knees in
a corner, sobbing like a child.