CHAPTER 13
Culver was not completely unconscious. The sense which remained most alive was that of hearing, so that he made out the voice of Burke yelling: “Put down Birger Ukko and seize up Culver. Seize him up. I’ll ’tend to him myself. Get his shirt off!”
And then Culver came back to his full wits with his wrists lashed into the shrouds well above his head, and the sound of the nine-tails whishing in the air, and the drawing stroke of them across his naked back.
Someone began to scream. That would be Koba. Maybe she wanted to do the flogging with her own hands. Burke panted and cursed at his labor, wielding the lash. Culver looked up at the stars that gaze on this little world and never change their faces, as though they stared but did not see us. Like a club and a cutting blade at on
