Bold Dick Donahue [pp. 113-124]

BOLD DICK DONAHUE.
between his teeth. It was then he felt
the value of the flogger's friendly prescription. The first blow left great
blue blisters behind it, but did not draw
blood. The disciplined flogger, preparing for his second, slowly and deliberately drew the cats through the fingers
of his left hand to unite the thongs and
to give the greater force and pungency
to his blow, when again down came the
cats like drops of molten lead a second
time on "maiden flesh "-a part of the
body not touched by the previous blow
-leaving, like its predecessor, great
blue blisters behind it. This was what
the flogger technically termed "chalking the track," and on this "track" the
remaining forty-eight stripes during the
next forty-eight minutes were dealt with
astonishing exactitude, till the blood
streamed like red-hot lava down the
man's limbs, while not a scratch was
made on the adjacent parts, it having
been the executioner's standing boast
that he could flog a man to death on a
space not larger than a butter-plate.
The fifty lashes having been administered, at the rate, as we have said, of a
lash per minute, Donahue was set
loose. Doctor Savage, the medical
officer of the prison, then walked up,
felt his pulse, and pronounced him fit
for work.
Donahue had been scarcely untied,
when three more of his fellow-prisoners
and shipmates were marched into the
yard, tied to the triangles, and made to
undergo a similar ordeal of fifty lashes
each for being unable to work-one of
whom fainted under the infliction-when
Doctor Savage, after the usual seriocomic interlude of pulse-feeling, ordered
them back to work again. After these
another batch, and then another, and
so the horrid work went on till eighteen
were flogged without intermission.
Most of these men, it may be observed, were brought up through sheer
wantonness, it having been customary
to subject newly-arrived convicts to the
lash on the least pretense of provocation, to give them a foretaste of what
they might expect in the event of their
becoming refractory- in other words,
to punish them by anticipation.
It will be easily imagined that these
convicts were now much less able to
work than before being flogged. Yet,
because they "refused" to work, they
were locked up, the sore parts rubbed
with salt and water, and were again
brought out to work next morning.
Still unable to work, they were again
brought to the triangles, received fifty
more lashes, and were again brought out
to work.
"This is a terrible life they're leading us, Dick," observed Bill Smith, a
Liverpool magsman, as he and Donahue crawled at the foot of a tree, endeavoring. or rather pretending, to cut
it down; "a terrible life!"
"Horrible!" was the rejoinder.
"They want to kill us out of the way,
and the sooner they do it the better for
ourselves!"
"Though in terrible agony," observed Smith, "I don't feel as if I
should die."
" So much the worse," returned the
other. "The longer we live the more
flogging we'll get."
"They say," continued Bill Smith,
"that prisoners in this place sometimes
cast lots as to which would kill the
other in order to get out of pain. What
do you say? Will you and I cast lots
as to which of us will sink this axe in
the other's skull? Whichever of us
does it will be hanged, and then the two
of us will be out of misery. What do
you say?"
" Never!" replied Donahue. " I
never killed a man in my life, and I'm
d d if ever I stand like a calf in
the shambles and allow another to kill
me, if I can help it."
"Well," returned the other, "I'll
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