All along I had my mind made up to take my “tampin’ ” in as manly a way as possible and to bite my tongue rather than cry out. Also I had tried to hypnotize myself up to a pitch where I could bow my back out toward the blows and hold it there till the thing was done. The first blow was like a bolt of lightning; it shocked and burned. Looking back at it now, it seems to me I jumped six feet in the air. But I couldn’t have jumped an inch, I was too securely trussed up. I got through it without squawking, but fell down sadly on the business of bowing my back out. With each succeeding blow I shrank farther away from the blistering lash and when it was all over my back was concaved, my chest was bowed out, and I was trembling like a helpless calf under the hot branding iron.

It made no difference how I wriggled and squirmed, I got the full force and effect of every blow, and each one fell on a different spot. “ Mr. Burr,” God bless him! served his apprenticeship as a flogging master in the British Navy, and he knew his little book.