Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land. A story of old Fiji онлайн

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These pleasant trips had an abrupt termination. My companion had the misfortune to gain the ill-will of a fellow servant, who made interest with the police, and had him unjustly sent back to prison for an alleged breach of one of the regulations controlling the bond servants.

In those days even free persons were subject to the lash for very trivial offences. What chance had a man, opposed to the false swearing of convict constables, with an offended officer of the law for his judge? Flogging was administered to the extent of 1,000 lashes, and sometimes a magistrate would order a witness to be taken out of court and subjected to the shameful indignity of a public flagellation, in the hope of getting more satisfactory information out of him.

Whitley, in addition to a term of imprisonment, was sentenced to undergo the lash for an offence of which he was not guilty. I was incensed. It was the period of my hot youth, in which I had more enterprise than discretion. I determined to procure his escape at all hazards.