The Expedition of Humphry ClinkerSmollett, T. (Tobias)
General
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
Smollett, T. (Tobias)
Epistolary fiction; Great Britain -- Fiction; Travelers -- Fiction
whether the captain was not the very image of our cousin governor
Griffith. She discovered a surprising eagerness to know the particulars
of his life, and asked a thousand questions concerning his atchievements
in war; all which Mr Lismahago answered with a sort of jesuitical
reserve, affecting a reluctance to satisfy her curiosity on a subject
that concerned his own exploits.
By dint of her interrogations, however, we learned, that he and ensign
Murphy had made their escape from the French hospital at Montreal, and
taken to the woods, in hope of reaching some English settlement; but
mistaking their route, they fell in with a party of Miamis, who carried
them away in captivity. The intention of these Indians was to give one
of them as an adopted son to a venerable sachem, who had lost his own
in the course of the war, and to sacrifice the other according to the
custom of the country. Murphy, as being the younger and handsomer of the
two, was designed to fill the place of the deceased, not only as the
son of the sachem, but as the spouse of a beautiful squaw, to whom his
predecessor had been betrothed; but in passing through the different
whigwhams or villages of the Miamis, poor Murphy was so mangled by the
women and children, who have the privilege of torturing all prisoners
in their passage, that, by the time they arrived at the place of the
sachem’s residence, he was rendered altogether unfit for the purposes of
marriage: it was determined therefore, in the assembly of the warriors,
that ensign Murphy should be brought to the stake, and that the lady
should be given to lieutenant Lismahago, who had likewise received his
share of torments, though they had not produced emasculation.--A joint
of one finger had been cut, or rather sawed off with a rusty knife; one
of his great toes was crushed into a mash betwixt two stones; some of
his teeth were drawn, or dug out with a crooked nail; splintered reeds
had been thrust up his nostrils and other tender parts; and the calves
of his legs had been blown up with mines of gunpowder dug in the flesh
with the sharp point of the tomahawk.
The Indians themselves allowed that Murphy died with great heroism,
singing, as his death song, the Drimmendoo, in concert with Mr
Lismahago, who was present at the solemnity. After the warriors and the
matrons had made a hearty meal upon the muscular flesh which they pared
from the victim, and had applied a great variety of tortures, which he
bore without flinching, an old lady, with a sharp knife, scooped out
one of his eyes, and put a burning coal in the socket. The pain of this
operation was so exquisite that he could not help bellowing, upon which
the audience raised a shout of exultation, and one of the warriors
stealing behind him, gave him the coup de grace with a hatchet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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