Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/27

 "introduce me to the gunner’s daughter." I was seized and placed over the breech of a sixty-two-pound  Paxon gun, and whipped with the colt so severely that  I could not sit down with any comfort for several  weeks. The colt is a piece of rope about three feet long and half an inch thick. The boatswain and his mates always carry one in their hats for immediate use  I worked my right hand behind me and received several very painful cuts over the knuckles. All this time we were lying not more than a quarter of a mile in a  straight line from where my mother lived, and if she  had been at an open window at the front of the house  she could have heard my piercing cries. On being released, I went forward, and one of the old sailors set  me on a bucket of water and put my hand into another. He said that would take out the soreness. It was in the fall of the year, and not very warm. I had on a white under-flannel, — that is, it was white once, — a  blue flannel shirt, and blue dungaree trousers. When I went below and took off my clothes, I found that my  trousers had been cut through, and threads from them  were sticking to my bruised flesh. When I shipped this time I had made up my mind to try to be somebody and to get ahead in the world; but now my hopes  were blasted. My ambition was gone, yes, whipped out of me, — and for nothing. This has been the case with many a sailor. Among the letters which I had received at the agent’s were the sailing orders, which  the captain expected, and this was the reason why he  was so anxious for my return. We sailed the next day for the south.