I was untied and stood there a little bit weak in the knees. My back was blistered, but the skin was not broken. The doctor took a look at it and went away. One of the guards threw my shirt over my shoulders and, holding it on with one hand, and my trousers up with the other, I was marched out and up a flight of stairs to the prison dispensary. The man in charge was dentist, apothecary, hospital steward, nurse and guard. He was a big, brawny, muscular Irishman with arms like an iceman’s. While he was applying a liquid to my back, probably to prevent infection, I asked him what it was he was using. “You will speak when you’re spoken to,” he growled severely with a brogue that was triple X positive. He fixed my back in silence and locked me in a cell in the hospital.

It was a year before I spoke to him again and I waited till he spoke to me first then. Going into his place one day I found him tugging at a Chinaman’s tooth. After he got it out and sent the patient away he came over to see what I wanted. He was puffing and perspiring, and, feeling rather pleased with his job on the tooth, wanted to talk to somebody. “Man,” he said, “that was an awful tooth in that Chinaman. Sure I thought the jaw was comin’ off of him.”

“Yes?” I inquired. “Was it a molar?”

“No, man, ’twas no molar; ’twas a back tooth.”

He was our prison dentist. He wasn’t a bad fellow at that. He brought me a worn volume of Shakespeare and let me take it to my cell. I kept it for months and read it all, and often wondered while reading it what would have happened to the British Empire if the spirited Will Shakespeare had been flogged when he stole Mr. Lucey’s venison.