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‘Hai!’ shouted Cattiwow, and brought his dreadful whip twice across Sailor’s loins with the crack of a shot-gun. The horse almost screamed as he pulled that extra last ounce which he did not know was in him. The thin end of the log left the dirt and rasped on dry gravel. The butt ground round like a buffalo in his wallow… ‘Dat’s the very first time I’ve knowed you lay into Sailor—to hurt him,’ said Lewknor. ‘It is,’ said Cattiwow, and passed his hand over the two wheals. ‘But I’d ha’ laid my own brother open at that pinch. |
This is from the intrduction to “Simple Simon“. in Rewards and Fairies (1910). Simon Cheyneyts was a ship-builder from Rye, not too far from Burwash, where the Kiplings lived. He was an old friend of ‘Frankie’ – Francis Drake, and he tells of how Drake had sailed to the world’s end, and round it. When the need arose he hanged his best friend for mutiny. Twenty years later he fought the Spanish Armada in the English Channel. |
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