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The Yellow Chief
The Yellow Chief
Chapter One.
The Punishment of the Pump
“To the pump with him! And see that he has a double dose of it!”
The words were spoken in a tone of command, earnest and angry. They were addressed to the overseer of a cotton-plantation not far from Vicksburg, in the State of Mississippi, the speaker being Blount Blackadder, a youth aged eighteen, and son to Squire Blackadder, the owner of the plantation.
Who was to receive the double douche?
Near by stood a personage to whom the words evidently pointed. He was also a youth, not very different either in age or size from him who had given the order; though his tawny skin and short crisped hair bespoke him of a different race – in short, a mulatto. And the time – for it is a tale of twenty years ago – along with other attendant circumstances, proclaimed him a slave of the plantation.
And why ordered to be thus served? As a punishment, of course.
You may smile at the idea, and deem it a joke. But the “punishment of the pump” is one of the most severe that can be inflicted; far more so than either the bastinado, or castigation by the lash. A man may writhe while his back is being scored by the cowskin; but that continuous stream of cold water, at first only refreshing, becomes after a time almost unendurable, and the victim feels as though his skull were being split open with an axe.
What had “Blue Dick” – the plantation sobriquet of the young mulatto – what had he done to deserve such chastisement?
The overseer, hesitating to inflict it, put this question to Blount Blackadder.
“That’s my business, and not yours, Mr Snively. Enough when I say he has deserved; and darn me if he don’t have it. To the pump with him!”
“Your father won’t be pleased about it,” pursued the overseer. “When he comes home – ”