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Updated: May 24, 2025
When the captain was gone, and I was left standing alone, my thoughts again recurred to the subject of impressment, which had so completely engrossed the minds of the crew that morning; and I thought to myself, "Suppose some crafty, determined, unscrupulous officer of the Ringdove, or some other British vessel, should be at this very time on shore, lounging about the wharves, disguised as an inoffensive citizen, but watching an opportunity to pounce upon a poor unfortunate fellow, like myself, and bear him off in triumph, to become a victim of the cat-o'-nine-tails at the gangway, or food for gunpowder."
She took hold of my arm, and without saying a word, gave me ten or twelve strokes over the head and shoulders with this miniature cat-o'-nine-tails. Truly, with her, it was "a word and a blow, and the blow came first." Wherever the strings chanced to fall upon the bare flesh, they raised the skin, as though a hot iron had been applied to it.
Well, the monkey midshipmen did not behave very correctly; so, Captain Reud had them one afternoon all tied up to one of his guns in the cabin, and one after the other, well flogged with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was highly ludicrous to see the poor fellows waiting each for his turn, well knowing what was to come; they never, than when under the impression of their fears, looked more human.
You want her to kiss you on the high cheek-bone, but if you go to play the cat-o'-nine-tails round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol blast it, look at her, son! What are the wild waves saying? They're sayin', 'This is a surprise, Miss Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse. My, ain't she got the luck of the old devil!" It seemed so.
I'd strip you with my own hands, for the disloyal scoundrel you are, with your pimping Republicanism and capsizing everything in a country like Old England. It's the cat-o'-nine-tails you want, and the bosen to lay on; and I'd do it myself.
When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in force for diminishing garroting and wife-beating 25 lashes on the bare back with the cat-o'-nine-tails.
Tell 'em if they don't put out a good foot and get off our hands soon we'll tie 'em up and make 'em understand that it's better to lie to a planter than to stick on shipboard too long. Make the women clean themselves up and look tidy like ancient housemaids, and don't allow any nonsense. Tell 'em if they swear or quarrel while the planters are aboard they'll get a cat-o'-nine-tails well laid on.
I'd strip you with my own hands, for the disloyal scoundrel you are, with your pimping Republicanism and capsizing everything in a country like Old England. It's the cat-o'-nine-tails you want, and the bosen to lay on; and I'd do it myself.
Social, kind-hearted, psalm-singing, sermon-hearing, Sabhath-keeping Christians; and yet, if we look at the fact of the matter, these very men have been out the whole afternoon of this beautiful day, under God's holy sunshine, as busily at work as Satan himself could wish in learning how to butcher their fellow-creatures and acquire the true scientific method of impaling a forlorn Mexican on a bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile in the brain of some unfortunate Briton, urged within its range by the double incentive of sixpence per day in his pocket and the cat-o'-nine-tails on his back!
Nevertheless, among our people we have gallant fore, main, and mizzen top-men aloft, who, well treated or ill, still trim our craft to the blast. We have a brig for trespassers; a bar by our main-mast, at which they are arraigned; a cat-o'-nine-tails and a gangway, to degrade them in their own eyes and in ours.
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