Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/194

 However, I stopped the scoundrel's mouth before he had said five words. I told him, I would pardon any thing sooner than insolence to my overseer. I would much sooner excuse impertinence towards myself. And to let him know what I thought of his conduct, here you see I have brought him back to you; and I have done it, even at the risk of being obliged to sleep here to-night, and catching the country fever. Whip the rascal well, Mr Martin! whip him well! I have had all the hands collected, that they may see the punishment, and take warning by it."

Mr Martin thus invited, sprung upon his prey with a tiger's ferocity. But I have no inclination to disgust myself with another description of the horrid torment of which in America, the whip is the active and continual instrument. He who is curious in these matters, will do well to spend six months upon an American plantation. He will soon discover that the rack was a superfluous invention; and that the whip, by those well skilled in the use of it, can be made to answer any purposes of torture.

Though Thomas was a cut up with the lash, and whipped by two drivers till he fainted from pain and loss of blood, such was the nerve and vigor of his constitution, and the noble firmness of his mind, that he stood it like a hero, and disdained to utter any of those piercing screams and piteous cries for mercy, which are commonly heard upon the like occasions. He soon got over the effects of this discipline; and in a few days was at work again as usual.

Not so with his wife. She was naturally of a slender constitution, and perhaps had not entirely recovered from the weakness incident upon child-birth. Either the whipping she had suffered, or her chains and starvation afterwards, or both together, had brought on a violent disorder, of which at first, she seemed to get better, but which left her suffering under a dull nervous fever, without strength or appetite, or even the desire of recovery. Her poor baby seemed to sympathize with its mother, and pined from day to day. At length it died. The mother did not long survive it. She lingered for a week or two. Sick as she was, she had no attendant except a superannuated old woman