Bastinado

“ These dancing girls abound throughout Asia. The most famous are the Almeh of Egypt, and the Nautch of India. These last are a caste, the first only a profession.]
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[ page 64.—For thee the bastinado. The bastinado is the common punishment of the East, and an effective and dreaded one. It is administered on the soles of the feet, the instrument a long cane or palm-branch. Public executions are very-rare.] ”

“ The strong bull-necked man that follows him with a hod of mortar is an unmistakeable seaman of one of the Mediterranean ports. He is a desperate character, and in other lands might be dangerous; but he is safe enough here, for the bastinado is a terrible instrument of torture, and the man is now not only desperate in wrath, but is sometimes desperately frightened. His driver takes a fiendish pleasure in giving him an extra cut of the whip, just to make him apparently a willing horse, whether he will or not. The poor youth beside him is a very different character. ”

“ The neighbours would not interfere in their quarrel, but carried them all before the judge. When they came before the magistrate, the robber, without staying to be examined, cried out, still feigning to be blind, "sir, since you are deputed to administer justice by the caliph, whom God prosper, I declare to you that we are equally criminal, my four comrades and I; but we have all engaged, upon oath, to confess nothing except we be bastinadoed ”

“ VOYAGE OF BASTIDAS. Quite exceptional to the ordinary adventurer was Bastidas. He was a man of standing in the community, possessed of some means himself and having wealthy friends; he was intelligent and influential, and withal humane, even Las Casas admitting that no one ever accused him of illtreating the Indians.
The friends of the honest notary, among them Juan de Ledesma, were ready enough to join him, pecuniarily, in a venture to the famous Pearl Coast, as the South American shore of the admiral's third voyage was now called. ”

“ The grey cubes piled against the mountain brightened into tall houses still locked in sleep. Presently, with a fore-glow of citron, the clear rim of the sun cut the sea-line; and the sea became jade green. The air was diamond pure; the mountains took on colour; and Bastia awakened to another careless day.
High caserne-like houses, massive-walled and stucco-fronted; shabby shops half a century behind the times; mustiness and age; cigarettes, vendetta knives, and goat-flesh,—these were some of Hugh’s first impressions of Bastia. ”

“ I pray you tell me this, Bassanio: if he should break his day, what should I gain by the exaction of the forfeiture? A pound of man's flesh, taken from a man, is not so estimable, nor profitable neither, as the flesh of mutton or beef. I say, to buy his favour I offer this friendship: if he will take it, so; if not, adieu."
At last, against the advice of Bassanio, who, notwithstanding all the Jew had said of his kind intentions, did not like his friend should run the hazard of this shocking penalty for his sake, Antonio signed the bond, thinking it really was (as the Jew said) merely in sport. ”

“ For miles on every side extended a vast unbroken plain, and the east coast lay before us spread out in sweeps of pale green marshy land, bright blue sea, and intersecting salt lakes. A little further on, Bastia herself came into view, standing white and picturesque against her brown rocks, and over her sunny sea, on which lay many a white-sailed vessel, unmoved by breath of wind or sway of tide in the hot calm of the June day, whilst the large village of Furriano, on an adjacent hill, looked greyly down from its cool green nest of foliage. ”

“ He faded as the Southern Cross rose higher in the sky, till even Balatta knew that he would be dead ere the nuptial date determined by his taboo. Ngurn made pilgrimage personally and gathered the smoke materials for the curing of Bassett's head, and to him made proud announcement and exhibition of the artistic perfectness of his intention when Bassett should be dead. As for himself, Bassett was not shocked. Too long and too deeply had life ebbed down in him to bite him with fear of its impending extinction. ”

“ Then Portia said such a friend should not lose so much as a hair of his head by the fault of Bassanio, and that gold must be found to pay the money; and in order to make all her possessions his, she would even marry her lover that day, so that he might start at once to the help of Antonio.
So in all haste the young couple were wedded, and also their attendants, Gratiano and Nerissa. Bassanio immediately set out for Venice, where he found his friend in prison. ”

“ Bastien, almost choked with anger and astonishment, at first could do nothing but stammer as he looked furiously at his wife:
"You—have—dared—what! You—"
Then stamping his foot with rage, he made a step toward his wife, shaking his great fists with such a threatening air, that the bailiff jumped before him, and cried: "Come, Jacques, what in the devil are you doing? You will not die of it, old fellow; it is only a present of about two thousand francs that your wife has given to the sufferers." ”

“ You were best to tell Antonio what you hear,
Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him.
SALARINO.
A kinder gentleman treads not the earth.
I saw Bassanio and Antonio part,
Bassanio told him he would make some speed
Of his return. He answered “Do not so,
Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio,
But stay the very riping of the time,
And for the Jew’s bond which he hath of me,
Let it not enter in your mind of love:
Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts
To courtship, and such fair ostents of love
As shall conveniently become you there.” ”

“ Perfectly; and this repugnance, by the way, was only too well justified, for Bastien, who was then forty-two years old, was as ugly as I am, to say the least, but had the constitution of a bull,—a sort of Farnese Hercules he was, in short,—though much more inclined to embonpoint, as he is an immense eater, and not at all cleanly in his personal habits. So much for him physically. Mentally, he is coarse, ignorant, arrogant, and bigoted, insufferably proud of the money he has amassed. ”

“ There is nobody as bad, even in the Book of Revelation!” shouted Bastin, in a kind of fury. “Moreover, I am not like Bickley. I know enough of you and your hellish powers to believe that what you plan, that you can do.”
“I believe it also,” sneered Oro. “But how comes it that the Great One whom you worship does not prevent the deed, if He exists, and it be evil?”
“He will prevent it!” raved Bastin. “Even now He commands me to prevent it, and I obey!” Then, drawing the revolver from his pocket, he pointed it at Oro’s breast, adding: “Swear not to commit this crime, or I will kill you!” ”

“ Bastin was indeed a most charitable man and in his way wide-minded.
The person whom I could not tolerate, however, was his wife, who, to my fancy, more resembled a vessel, a very unattractive vessel, full of vinegar than a woman. Her name was Sarah and she was small, plain, flat, sandy-haired and odious, quite obsessed, moreover, with her jealousies of the Rev. Basil, at whom it pleased her to suppose that every woman in the countryside under fifty was throwing herself. ”

“ It was then that Bassino came into the affair. He was an adventurer, pure and simple. Although Italian, his love of money was greater than his love of country. You should have been at the department this morning when the girl told how she had been forced to serve his ends against her will. Like many another good woman she had thrown herself away on a worthless scoundrel; and despite the many heartaches and troubles he caused her, she loved him deeply, fiercely. She holds Fitzgerald responsible for her lover’s untimely end, and swears vengeance by all the saints. ”

“ The earth has been broken, and fissured, and worn away. The Elbe sweeps majestically at the foot of the Bastei; a plain is spread beneath, closed in by an amphitheatre of huge columnar hills, which do not, as is usually the case, begin with gradual upland, but rise at once in shape fantastic,—isolated one from the other. Some of the highest and most abrupt have been used as fortresses. The sides of the precipices of the Bastei are clothed in a forest of firs and other wood. [1] The whole scene was bathed in dazzling sunshine. ”

“ Yet therein was usually to be found his favourite crony and gossip, Ngurn, always willing for a yarn or a discussion, the while he sat in the ashes of death and in a slow smoke shrewdly revolved curing human heads suspended from the rafters. For, through the months' interval of consciousness of his long sickness, Bassett had mastered the psychological simplicities and lingual difficulties of the language of the tribe of Ngurn and Balatta and Vngngn--the latter the addle-headed young chief who was ruled by Ngurn, and who, whispered intrigue had it, was the son of Ngurn. ”

“ For it was as easy to say that the Count kissed her as to say that she would not let him, and he would have had the tobacco all the same."
"May he die of a stroke!" muttered Ruggiero.
"But if I were in your place," said his brother calmly, "I would not do anything to your padrone, because the girl is a good girl and gave him the good answer, and as for him—" Bastianello shrugged his shoulders.
"May the sharks get his body and the devil get his soul!"
"That will be as it shall be," answered Bastianello. "And it is sure that if God wills, the grampuses will eat him. But we do not know the end. ”

“ Late in the month of June, Marie Bastien—for that was the name of this young mother—found herself in this room with her son. It was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon, and the golden rays of the declining sun, though obstructed to some extent by the slats of the Venetian blinds, were, nevertheless, playing a lively game of hide-and-seek, now with the dark woodwork, now with the big bouquets of fresh flowers in the china vases on the mantel. ”

“ Raoul de Pont Brillant soon learned that the young man who had snatched him from an almost certain death was Frederick Bastien.
The dowager had not renounced her project of giving this charming little commoner, so near her castle, and whose husband was always absent, to her grandson as a mistress; so, finding, as she said to Zerbinette, an excellent opportunity for undertaking the affair, she went again to see Madame Bastien, at whose house she had twice before presented herself in vain, taking her maid with her in her elegant carriage. ”

“ But if I was Cantine, and you ain’t goin’ to perforate Cantine on sight, what in Hades do you mean?”
“Mean?” echoed Bassett. “Your gall is sure chilled steel and case-hardened on top. Do you think as me or any other white man’s goin’ to eat, drink or sleep with or breathe the same air as you? You as broke the bond of bread and blanket, the Northland law as no man ever breaks, and lives to boast of it! Days on end I seen you sit at table with my pardner Sark under his own roof in White Pass City. ”

“ A bright spot burned on either cheek bone.
"What art goin' to do?" sputtered Lovering, always suspicious yet envious of Kirke.
"Wait here and see. There'll be some fun."
He slunk down the stairs like a shadow. Outside Bastien's door he listened for a second, hearing low voices, and a sob with a little laugh behind it. The young trollop, he thought, going from one man's room to another's with her laughing and her crying. She didn't know how to take care of herself. He'd teach her. Give her a lesson she wouldn't forget. Give that cursed Bastien a lesson. Bastien most of all. ”

“ As it chanced we did, for these stone ovens take a long time to heat. There by the edge of his fiery grave with his hands and legs bound in palm-fibre shackles, stood Bastin, quite unmoved, smiling indeed, in a sort of seraphic way which irritated us both extremely. Round him danced the infuriated priests of Oro, and round them, shrieking and howling with rage, was most of the population of Orofena. We rushed up so suddenly that none tried to stop us, and took our stand on either side of him, producing our pistols as we did so. ”

“ He was smoking a clay pipe with a cane stem, and he was thinking vaguely of Teresina, wondering whether Ruggiero would never speak to her, and if he never did, whether he, Bastianello, might not at last have his turn.
A number of small boys were bathing in the bright sunshine, diving off the stones of the breakwater and running along the short pier, brown urchins with lithe thin limbs, matted black hair and beady eyes. Suddenly Bastianello was aware of a small dark face and two little hands holding upon the gunwale of his boat. ”

“ Many pictures, unrelated, came and went in Bassett’s mind as he reviewed that period of his terrible wanderings. He remembered invading another village of a dozen houses and driving all before him with his shot-gun save, for one old man, too feeble to flee, who spat at him and whined and snarled as he dug open a ground-oven and from amid the hot stones dragged forth a roasted pig that steamed its essence deliciously through its green-leaf wrappings. ”

“ You mustn’t!”
“It’s the only talk he understands,” muttered Bastiano, his lean brown face slowly flushing under the horror in those dusky eyes. “You can’t treat mules like bishops.”
“Why not?” asked Pilarica.
“The world is coming to a pretty pass when a man can’t bang his beast,” growled Bastiano, dropping the stone, while Blanco planted his four feet wide apart in stubborn resistance to anything and everything that might be demanded of him.
At that point there pierced through all the tumult of the courtyard the shrill tones of Tia Marta.
“Pilarica! Rafael! ”

“ From the striker king-post, were suspended ropes of climbers to which men could apply their strength and direction. Like a battering ram, this king-post could be driven end-onward against the mighty red-iridescent sphere.
Here was where Ngurn officiated and functioned religiously for himself and the twelve tribes under him. Bassett laughed aloud, almost with madness, at the thought of this wonderful messenger, winged with intelligence across space, to fall into a bushman stronghold and be worshipped by ape-like, man-eating and head-hunting savages. ”