"

"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 rav