“Father,” said Dan, with his milder nature trembling at the stern resolution in his father's eyes, as the hearth-fire flashing up showed their stronger flash, “you will never do such a thing, at my age and size?”
“Won't I?” answered Zebedee, cracking in the air the three knotted tails of the stout hempen twist. “As for your age, why, it ought to know better; and as for your size, why, the more room for this!”
It never came into Daniel's head that he should either resist or run away. But into his heart came the deadly sense of disgrace at being flogged, even by his own father, at full age to have a wife and even children of his own.
“Father,” he said, as he pulled off his coat and red striped shirt, and showed his broad white back, “if you do this thing, you will never set eyes on my face again--so help me God!”
“Don't care if I don't,” the captain shouted. “You was never son of mine, to be a runagate, and traitor. How old be you, Master Free and Frisky, to larn me how the world goes on?”
“As if you didn't know, father! The fifteenth of last March I was twenty years of age.”
“Then one for each year of your life, my lad, and another to make a man of thee. This little tickler hath three tails; seven threes is twenty-one--comes just right.”
When his father had done with him, Dan went softly up the dark staircase of old ship timber, and entering his own little room, struck a light. He saw that his bed was turned down for him, by the loving hand of his mother, and that his favourite brother Solomon, the youngest of the Tugwell race, was sleeping sweetly in the opposite cot. Then he caught a side view of his own poor back in the little black-framed looking-glass, and was quite amazed; for he had not felt much pain, neither flinched, nor winced, nor spoken. In a moment self-pity did more than pain, indignation, outrage, or shame could do; it brought large tears into his softened eyes, and a long sob into his swelling throat.
He had borne himself like a man when flogged; but now he behaved in the manner of a boy. “He shall never hear the last of this job,” he muttered, “as long as mother has a tongue in her head.” To this end he filled a wet sponge with the red proofs of his scourging, laid it where it must be seen, and beside it a leaf torn from his wage-book, on which he had written with a trembling hand: “He says that I am no son of his, and this looks like it. Signed, Daniel Tugwell, or whatever my name ought to be.”