An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition by Cartland Barbara Page B

incensed with her over yet another matter.
    This morning she had come on deck earlier than usual. It had been a very hot night and she had found it impossible to sleep, so instead of waiting until Hapley brought her breakfast she had come from her cabin before eight bells sounded and arrived on the quarter-deck just a few minutes in advance of Rodney himself.
    She was not to know the ship’s routine and Master Barlow’s question of “Hands to punishment. sir?” took her by surprise. The pipes of the boatswain’s mates began to twitter.
    “All hands to witness punishment!” roared a Petty Officer on the main deck and the men began to pour up from below while Rodney stood rigid by the quarter-deck rail.
    The expression on his face was severe and there was something in his attitude and in the men’s expectancy which made Lizbeth wish she had kept to her cabin. But she could not push past Rodney and leave the quarterdeck. She must stand and watch the boatswain’s mates trice a man naked to the waist up to the main rigging. Then the drums began to roll.
    In her short sheltered life Lizbeth had not imagined in her wildest dreams anything so bestial as the cat-o’-nine tails whipping through the air, tearing at the naked flesh until the blood flowed in a crimson stream from the man’s back on to the clean-scrubbed deck.
    As was usual with an experienced seaman the man made no sound, but at the end of two dozen strokes he hung motionless and silent. A bucket of water was flung over him. He was cut down and hustled below.
    “Hands to breakfast, Master Barlow,” Rodney commanded.
    The men on deck seemed to vanish as quickly as they had come and it was only then that Rodney turned to see Lizbeth with a white face and hands that were clenched together to prevent herself from fainting.
    “You are early this morning.” He remarked, but she imagined he was glad to see her weakness.
    All the horror of what she had just seen boiled up into a sudden hatred of him.
    “Are you a devil,” she asked passionately, “that you should treat a human being in such a way?”
    “The man had disobeyed an order,” Rodney answered coldly. “If men were allowed to do such things without punishment, then it would be impossible to control or direct the ship!”
    “It is cruel and wicked,” Lizbeth stormed.
    “They all know the penalty of disobedience,” Rodney said. “’Tis a pity your brother Francis was not here to see it.”
    He turned on his heel as he spoke and went below to his breakfast, while Lizbeth stood gripping the rail and despising herself because the tears blurred her eyes. The shock of what she had just witnessed made her whole body quiver, and she felt that the sight of that man’s torn and bleeding back would haunt her all her life.
    She was not to know that Rodney, sitting alone at his breakfast table, had always disliked the floggings that were the tradition of every ship that sailed the seven seas. He would rather have died than admit such a thing to Lizbeth, for he was bitterly ashamed of such weakness, but though he had seen hundreds of them, they still left him feeling sick in the pit of his stomach and any breakfast, even a more appetising one than that he was eating now, had the taste of sawdust after what he had just seen on deck.
    The thought of Lizbeth’s white face and trembling fingers made him push aside his plate after he had eaten only a mouthful or so.
    “Curse the wench,” he said out loud. “She has asked for it in coming. How can I help what she sees and hears?”
    And yet he knew he would never be hardened to pain and suffering wherever he might find it. Just a flogging disturbed him physically every time he saw it, so Lizbeth’s distress had equally the power to hurt him.
    Her little face, white and strained by the shock of what she had seen, was like a dagger in his heart. Her eyes were wide and defiant of the tears that were not far away and her lips trembled –the lips he had kissed and