That pleased the sergeant
greatly; he was a thorough soldier himself, and heartily hated
tenderfeet and cowards. He looked at me approvingly, and said:
"Because you have always been a good soldier, I shall make the
punishment easier for you. You have the privilege of dividing the
number of lashes in two: ten you get to-morrow, and ten you may put
off for some other time." That was the customary way of making the
punishment easier in the cases when the Cantonist was either too
weak to take in the whole number of lashes at once, or was thought
to deserve consideration otherwise. A temporary relief it certainly
was; but in the end the relief was worse than the punishment itself.
Between the first half of the punishment and the other half, life
was a burden to the culprit: he could neither eat, nor drink, nor
sleep in peace. Every moment he felt as if his back were not his
own, that he merely had borrowed it for a while, and sooner or later
he would have to stretch himself on the ground, to bear the weight
of a rider on his neck and of another on his feet, and have the rods
fall on him with a swish: one, two, three.
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