The Last Birching

“And now for you, my red-haired pretty,” Master Dickon softly growled as he stared covetously at the trembling Ariel Clarisson. His assistant cut the bonds that held Beatrice Digby's wrists to the crossarms and, forcing her to her knees, the young assistant corded her wrists behind her back and left her there with Altea to agonize and to sob heartrendingly at the torment of their young virgin bodies ... and to expose, heedlessly now because the suffering was so great, the dark gold and the jet black tufts of pussyhair which shielded their maiden love centers.

“Come along, Mistress Ariel,” Master Dickon chuckled in rare good humor, “you are the oldest, you have the most strokes, and I shall honor you with the full strength of my arm. Prepare her, Tom.”

The two naked ladies-in-waiting who had already received their birching, Beatrice Digby and Altea Talmadge, lay on their sides, their wrists bound behind their backs, naked except for their hose and garters and shoes, to one side of the whipping post. Their groans and tears and lamentations could be heard in the uneasy silence of the royal court yard. And now it was the turn of the ringleader, the beautiful twenty-three-year-old Ariel, whose temperament was as fiery as her hair and who now would be called upon to prove her courage. She could see the eyes of the spectators greedily staring at the two squirming, shamefully naked bodies, she could see the creamy skin of Altea marked with the now livid welts of the birching, and the soft pink skin of Beatrice, that exquisite blonde with such a gentle and docile nature, angrily striated. They were past caring now that they showed their pussies to the gloating spectators, for not only had shame crushed them but the atrocious pain of the flogging had attenuated their sexual excitement.

She stood, very pale, her head held high, as the young assistant executioner approached her, cut the bonds at her wrists and then grasped her by her left wrist to lead her to the post. “I won't resist,” she whispered, “just get it over with as swiftly as you can, please.”

“I'm sorry, my lady, my heart's not in this work. You and those two there are quality, and shouldn't have to be treated like—well—low hussies,” Tom muttered back. He made fast work of affixing her wrists to the metal rings set at each end of the crossarm of the whipping post. Then, with an apologetic, “Forgive me, my lady,” he set his hands to the neck of her black gown and ripped it down with a brutal tug. Ariel closed her eyes and took a long deep breath to fortify herself. She gasped again because the young assistant once again seized the tattered gown at the hips and tore it down to her ankles, then tugged it off her body.

In order to shorten the atrocious ritual of “preparation” for the birching, Ariel had left off her stays and petticoats, as, indeed, had Altea, and Beatrice before her. She, like they, wore just a chemise, and a thin camisole under it—a kind of jacket with straps which covered the bosom and the back down to about the midriff—her drawers, hose, garters and shoes. Now it was the time for the chemise to be ripped off; and a gasp of admiration, loud enough to attract the attention of the beautiful red-haired prisoner at the post, rose at the sight of this voluptuous, lithe, graceful body so tautly presented with extended arms, on tiptoe, all her fine, agile muscles quivering and in play, in this scanty and provocative dishabille.

Charlotte Sophia leaned forward over the windowsill to follow the stripping of this proud vixen who, in her opinion, was the worst of the lot, the one who had instigated this ridiculous trick which had so insulted her regal person. She wished she had made it the cat-of-nine-tails instead of the birch, and doubted the number of lashes instead of only twenty-three, one for each of Ariel's age. But at least, she-thought grimly to herself, the little Dime would receive many more lashes under the hot South Carolina sun, toiling on one of those cotton or tobacco plantations. She had given orders to the Lord Chamberlain to see to it that Ariel's indenture, even more that the lot of the other girls, be directed towards one of the harshest task masters, so that Ariel might well expiate her sin.

The young assistant now ripped away the camisole, and an even louder gasp rose at the sight of Ariel's magnificent titties, their dainty coral points stiffening with the cool air of this cloudy May morning. What magnificent, erect and arrogant globes they were, hard pears of pale creamy flesh flecked delicately with myriad rosy nuances, that exquisite speckling which attested to the natural tint of Ariel's hair and the pigmentation which supplemented it!

Her sweet belly was flat, and the dainty niche of her navel was exposed, an adorable eye which seemed to wink at the avid spectators, very narrow and deep, so furtive that My Lord Bruce Warrington, the first comptroller of the Royal Treasury, who had a penchant for thrusting his turgid penis into the bellybutton of his concubines and there achieving orgasmic fulfillment, seriously doubted that the sweet circumference of Ariel's navel would allow such introduction.

Master Dickon, who was examining the remaining birch rods soaking in the two brine-filled buckets in order to select a proper instrument for the fustigation of Ariel Clarisson's behind, now called out in a low voice to Tom, “Don't rush things so, man! Let 'em enjoy the baggage's bare skin! Let her wriggle about a bit before you take down her drawers. You'll have a better tip for your work, take it from an old hand at the trade!”

Ariel's lovely creamy cheeks turned scarlet with mortification as she overheard this obscene suggestion. She steeled her muscles as she pressed herself against the rough upright post, finding that she had been bound so tightly at the wrists and in such a pose that she had to exert all her muscular strength to stand on tiptoe if she did not wish the tight cords about her sensitive wrists to chafe and dig cruelly into the tender skin.

The spectators could see through the tightly molding white batiste sheath of Ariel's drawers the magnificent choreography of her buttocks, those solid and enticingly contoured ovals with which her long, supple and beautifully sculptured thighs merged in such harmonious juncture and it promised a highly entertaining spectacle when the drawers should be removed and those pale white, rosy-flecked bottom globes should quake and contract and jiggle and dance under the stinging switches of the executioner's birch.

Ariel Clarisson waited in a growing agony of suspense, praying that it would be over. Half a dozen times she was on the point of crying out to the executioner to begin the punishment, that it might be the sooner over. But each time she checked herself, knowing that the malevolent Charlotte Sophia would only find therefrom a sadistic delight in knowing her victim so afflicted by the mental torment which always augmented the physical.

The cool air laved her titties, flinting the coral buds in those dark-coral aurolae. As she pressed herself, the sides of her titties rubbed against the rough wood, reminding her of where she was and what awaited her, and she shuddered violently at this foretaste of pain to come.

“Oh, God, let it start, let it start before I cry out and shame myself before that vicious sow! Ariel thought as she prayed to retain her sanity in this awful moment of degradation. And as if in answer to her prayer, she suddenly felt the strong fingers of the young executioner's assistant on the waistband of her drawers. He pulled the waistband open, grabbed the tops and then slowly peeled the garment down from the glories of her jutting bottom ovals. Slowly, like a connoisseur delectating over that Callyphygian regalia, Tom drew the sheath down inch by inch so that those who watched might rhapsodize over the gradual unveiling of the firm, quivering, satiny oval hillocks! Ariel tensed herself, and arched her loins forward in an instinctive virginal attempt to hide the dark-red curls of her maiden bush from those besmirching eyes. Now she felt her drawers slither to her ankles, where they remained out of a refinement which the executioner himself designated with a gesture of his hand.

And she stood ready for the birch, naked to the stocking tops, the lovely, deeply hollowed spinal column making her back a wonderful canvas of soft creamy flesh, which culminated in those two temptingly ripe and firm, succulent bottom ovals with their gradually broadening furrow hiding its mystery in the ambery-shadowy groove which separated them.

All was in readiness now, and the spectators were agog with libidinous excitement. For Ariel Clarisson was the most beautiful of the trio, the oldest, the most courageous, and, it was well known, the ringleader of all these merry pranks which had finally boomeranged to bring her to this demeaning scaffold before the members of the court and the royal household.

Master Dickon rose, having selected the birch. It was a long and supple sheaf of switches, about seven of them carefully selected and profusely twigged so that the green buds would add additional sting to the tender quivering flesh of the naked prisoner. He brandished it in the air, whistled it over his head, as he slowly approached, with a heavy and ponderous dignity befitting his royal service. Here, in his opinion, was a magnificent bottom on which to work, one on which he could show the full gamut of his mastery. The girl's skin was delicate and delightfully sensitive, he was certain. And now he took his place at Ariel's left, his eyes feasted on the tensing ovals consigned to his punitive arm, observing with a silence view the resilience of the flesh, the contortions and the twitchings and palpitations which pervaded Ariel's naked flesh and which, in his role of torturer and executioner, told him much about the victim's temperament and her ability to withstand the flogging.

“You will count twenty-three, Tom,” he announced in his gruff voice. Ariel again drew a long breath and tremblingly tightened her muscles, arching on tiptoe, her calves and thighs quivering with the tension of her muscular resistance to the rod. She bowed her head, as in meditation, her eyes tightly closed. But she could hear the murmur of voices, unintelligible and yet, she knew, commenting on her naked charms, speculating on her ability to endure the flogging without crying out or pleading for mercy. And she knew that Charlotte Sophia was surely still watching at that window, waiting to gloat on her torture. She would bite her tongue off before she would utter a single supplication for leniency.

Master Dickon was in no hurry. He had already demonstrated excellent skill with Ariel's predecessor, and a glance at the still whimpering naked girl lying to one side on the scaffold beyond the post told him that she, at any rate, had no reason for complaining over her due. But this girl, the Lord Chamberlain had informed him, deserved the full brunt of the rod, a chastisement that would be unforgettable and recall to her, during her years of servitude in the colonies, the crime of lese-majeste which she had dared against her sovereign to whom she owed all fealty and respect.

He lowered the birch to the floor of the scaffold taking careful aim, while Ariel waited, setting her teeth against her underlip, her delicate nostrils dilating with the afflux of quickened breathing, the understandable sign of this atrocious and frightening, suspense.

As the naked red-haired beauty waited, she heard a chorused gasp of “Aahhh!” and with a shuddering anguish knew what it betokened: the rod had risen in the air and was en route to deliver its first biting kiss. And then she felt the scalding-hot dash of the supple switches curl across both buttocks, just below the hips, and the shock of it forced a convulsive jerk of her naked body against the whipping post and drew a stifled “Ohh!” from her compressed lips.

“One!” the executioner's assistant called out in a ringing voice.

Master Dickon lowered the rod and studied the tensing creamy bottom before him. The first cut had left thin parallel bright pink streaks over both cheeks of Ariel's bare behind, and they were deepening now and darkening as the cool air caressed the palpitating flesh. He could see how the muscles of her sinuous calves flexed and shifted as she prepared herself for the next cut, and he smiled dourly to himself. She was a proud upstart, a fancy, pampered vixen who doubtless had never known such castigation. He would have her howling before a baker's dozen, or his name was not Reuben Dickon. He did not doubt that this proud baggage would be shrieking ere long.

Grinding his teeth together, he stepped forward and sent the birch whistling across the base of Ariel's naked behind. Again she jerked convulsively against the whipping post, grinding her furry snatch against the chafing wood, her head lifting a little, and her eyes opening under the ferocious stinging impact of the switches on her soft sensitive skin. But this time she had been prepared for it and she had-ground her teeth too to hold back any outcry. Nonetheless, the uncontrollable shivering along her thighs and calves and into the cheeks of her tightening buttocks told the executioner that she had not been impervious to the stroke.

“Two!” Tom announced.

There was a long pause until the next stroke, and Ariel nervously shifted from foot to foot, harassed by the stricture of her tender wrists against the cold heavy iron rings at the cross-arm. She bowed her head, she drew several deep breaths and prepared herself for the onslaught of that wicked, swishing rod. Out of maiden modesty, she continued to contract the muscles of her bottom to hide the shameful intimacy of the mysterious, shadowy crease between the oval globes. Master Dickon smiled again. She was an obdurate piece, this one! And judging from the way she squirmed and jerked that sweet arse of hers, he would wager his entire fee for this morning's work that she'd never been so much as bare-bottom smacked by her folks when she was a child. Else she would know that the stiffening of the muscles only makes the rod bite the more greedily and cause the more pain.

Then suddenly he lofted the rod, waved it in the air, and brought it down with a direct vertical sweep over the left buttock, the tips of the switches biting against the tender side and the edge of the hipbone, the full impact of the withes harshly stinging the plump firm curve of the summit. Once again taken by surprise, Ariel Clarisson jerked convulsively, and turned her face slightly to the left, as a stifled moan rose in her throat. Her nostrils flared and shrank as she fought for breath, and she was forced to shift from foot to foot to ease the now aching bite of the cords around her slender wrists.

“Three!” Tom announced.

Instantly, with hardly a moment of respite, Master Dickon whirled the birch above his head, and then drove it down on the right buttock, in exact counterpart to the previous blow. Ariel writhed and twisted violently from side to side, the firm mounds of her bottom jiggling and quaking in this peroration, and again her head rose, her eyes very wide now and blurred with tears, while a strangled “Ohh!” was finally wrested from her as Tom called out the fourth stroke.

Altea and Beatrice watched from where they lay, their own pain momentarily forgotten as they perceived the stoic courage of their dearest friend. And they, like the spectators, gasped aloud as they saw the hooded executioner step back, the birch extended horizontally in the air and then step forward to deliver a sweeping slash over the base of both huddling naked creamy globes.

“Oh—ahh!” Ariel Clarisson gasped aloud, and for the first time she glanced nervously back over her shoulder to see the dread figure of the executioner.

Master Dickon smiled with satisfaction. The little baggage felt that one, there was no doubt about it. And the striata left by the switches had now created a lascivious pattern on the pale creamy, rosey-speckled bare flesh of that voluptuously provocative posterior. She had eighteen cuts left, and he meant to give her three or four on the back and shoulders and perhaps one or two across the thighs before concentrating all the rest on that saucy arse.

Again Master Dickon paused, lowering the rod to the floor of the scaffold while he contemplated the effects of the first five cuts on Ariel Clarisson's naked bottom. The weals were darkening now, and showed up in salacious contrast to the pale creamy expanse of that magnificent behind which had not yet been touched. He had made a kind of geometric pattern, with the two vertical cuts barring each globe in a downward sweep, and then the three parallel strokes across the tops of the hips, the very center of her bottom, and the base. Where next the birch would strike that voluptuous backside of hers, there would be intersecting streaks which would cut the finely grained skin and at last draw blood, he knew.

But now, to vary the fustigation, he raised the rod overhead and swept it around and then from right to left across her bare shoulders. Ariel had not expected this variation in the punishment; as a consequence, the bruising shock of the switches falling en masse over her gracefully slim shoulders drove her forward so that her titties mashed their impetuous crests against the heavy wooden whipping post, and a barely audible groan of “Aahhh!” was torn from her trembling lips.

“Six!” the young assistant declaimed.

The seventh blow followed at once, across the waist, and so adroitly placed that the tips of the supple withes licked round Ariel's naked side and onto her belly. Her face twisted with anguish, as her body convulsively jerked from side to side and she seemed to arch her loins against the post as her head tilted back, her eyes filling with tears, her nostrils flaring and a sobbing “Ohhh!” announced her feverish discomfort. The streaks left by the switches on her fair skin were bright under the cool air and the leaden sky, and they would darken with the caress of the air upon the sensitive flesh. The executioner's assistant announced the seventh stroke.

Now Master Dickon contemplated the gracefully chisled thighs, wonderfully supple and lithe, admiring the dainty pale blue rosette garters adjusted at the stocking tops to keep the girl's hose without wrinkle on those long lovely legs. He would make them caper before the count had reached the twenty-third stroke! And to that end, slowing raising the rod, he cut from right to left across both naked upper thighs, just below the base of that jutting vulnerable and already piteously welted backside.

“Ohh my God, ohh!” for the first time Ariel Clarisson cried out and shrilly under that furious slash. A woman's thighs are often more tender than her bottom, and the proud coppery-haired lady-in-waiting had never before known the ignominy or the burning bite of the punitive rod on her fair skin. She executed an awkward jump from foot to foot, almost like a grotesque peasant dance, her naked titties jiggling, her quivering bottomcheeks jouncing and contracting voluptuously, and the murmur of the spectators grew louder as they delectated over this visible weakening under the lash. They longed to see the blood flow, longed for desperate cries for mercy, longed to watch her naked, gloriously exciting body jump and twist and jerk and then finally, frantically, seek to evade the furious slashes of the birch. There was no pity in their hearts for Ariel Clarisson; she was now only a naked, female body sentenced to be whipped, condemned to be degraded for their pleasure, and they were impatient to have her taste the full lees of the bitter draught of suffering and ignominy. Master Dickon was perspiring under his hood, and he examined the rod, which had begun to fray. Many green buds and a few twigs lay scattered on the floor of the scaffold around the whipping post. He cast aside the birch and walked back toward the two buckets of brine to select another, meanwhile gesturing to his assistant to bring him a flagon of ale which had been placed by a guardsman on the edge of the scaffold near the steps. He found another rod as supple and as murderously flexible, swishing it about in the air, and then replaced it in the bucket while he strode back to quaff his ale. Ariel bowed her head and groaned aloud, desperately praying for strength for the remainder of her lashing. Fifteen more lashes, fifteen horrid biting kisses of that fiendishly stinging, burning rod. And an eternity of despondent shame and degradation as her body, unable to do her bidding longer as her will weakened before the onslaught of pain and suffering, twisted and jerked like a puppet to the tune which the rod would call.

He drank half the flagon, then wiped his coarse mouth with the back of his gloved hand, set the flagon down, and went back to the bucket to retrieve the new rod. Again he swished it in the air to shake out the last drops of brine, then gave it two or three trial cuts in the air, making it whistle. Ariel Clarisson turned her tear-stained, contorted face to the right to watch his grim preliminary to the resumption of her fustigation. Then, with a shudder, she bowed her head and closed her eyes again, twisting her wrists and trying to adjust them to some degree of comfort against the chafing cords which fixed them to the metal rings of the whipping post. Now again silence fell as expectancy gripped the spellbound audience. 

Once again, Ariel could tell by the taut silence around her that the birch was about to resume its hellish work. And even as she thought this, the ninth stroke fell solidly across the center of her bottomcheeks, the twigs whisking round towards her tender groin, delivered with full force, and driving her with a spasmodic, wrenching lunge of her naked body against the whipping post. “Oh God, oh God! Give me strength!” she cried aloud, raising her tear-drenched eyes to the cloudy sky above, and her fingers clawed the air as she uncontrollably jerked at her bound wrists. The muscles of her bottom spasmed, as did those of her thighs and calves, and for a moment the streaked and quivering bottom ovals formed a rigid mass of tender flesh furiously resisting the pitiless cruelty of the lashing.

“Nine!” Tom pronounced.

Without respite, Master Dickon whirled the rod about his head, stepped forward and sent it sweeping over the very same spot where the previous stroke had bitten.

“AAARRRHHH!!! OHH, HOW IT TEARS MY POOR FLESH!!! HAVE PITY ON ME!” Ariel Clarisson screamed, in her exorbitant agony. She had ground her pussy against the whipping post, and now she twisted and rubbed herself as if in the salacious act of onanism, while her naked titties heavingly flattened against the unyielding wood, her head fell back, her eyes widely dilated and blinded with tears, and she shifted from foot to foot in a desperate attempt to find some solace in the cruelly constrained position which made her so vulnerable to the wickedly whistling birch.

All that she could think of was that thirteen more blows of that terrible rod remained, and that already after ten her bottom and shoulders and thighs felt scorched, and her muscles were aching from the repeated stress she placed upon them in preparing herself to meet .the burning shock of those licking, searching withes which curled around her tender flesh so pitilessly.

With it, too, was the frantic and desperate wish to conceal as much of her private person as she could from these jeering eyes, and that was why she rubbed her pussy and flattened her titties against the whipping post. But oh, if they would only untie her wrists, she would gladly hug the post and bear the thrashing courageously, for her wrists ached so cruelly and she was sure the skin was broken from the twisting of the thin strong cords into her flesh as she writhed and jerked under the blows from Master Dickon.

The eleventh lash was atrocious. She heard the whistling Huishhh and immediately pressed herself forward, but that still did not give her defense enough against the horrid pain. It was like a scalding douse, applied horizontally just below the plumpest curves of both bottom summits, and it made her cry out hoarsely again, wordlessly, for she had rebuked herself for calling for mercy after the previous stroke. Her ears were buzzing and her temples were pounding as she heard Tom call out “Eleven!”

And now again without respite, hardly had his last syllable echoed into silence, than the birch resumed its diabolical torment of her tethered naked body, sweeping from on high and diagonally from right to left down both shuddering and welted bottomglobes.

“Oh how I suffer!” she cried aloud in her despair, knowing even as she uttered the words that Charlotte Sophia was relishing them, mocking her suffering, gloating over it and yearning for more to be inflicted.

“Twelve!” the executioner's assistant called out.

Once again Master Dickon lowered the birch, studied it critically, and then moved back to the edge of the scaffold to stoop, retrieve his flagon, and to empty it, almost in a single draught. Refreshed, he set it down with a clatter and then returned to the whipping post. Ariel had turned her head over her shoulder to follow him and when her eyes met his hooded face and she could see the glitter of his beady eyes through the slits in that hood, she uttered a groaning sob and quickly bowed her head and closed her eyes, trembling fitfully as she strained on tiptoe. The muscles of her calves ached furiously, and her kneehollows felt weak and trembling. But above all else was the flaming fury which these last few cuts attacking her naked posterior had inflicted.

She heard him chuckle. It was with satisfaction, for he had his purpose. He had made this baggage, this flouncy lady-in-waiting to a queen, wriggle and cry out for mercy. The eleven remaining blows of the birch would make her grovel. Before he finished, she would babble that she would even give her body to him if he would suspend the birch. And this would be his final triumph before his sovereign.

Sadistically, he extended the rod of switches, and laid them solidly across the base of that magnificent and now cruelly streaked bare bottom. Ariel caught her breath, and gave a sobbing little whimper as again she stiffened herself and arched tightly against the post, her pussycurls rubbing convulsively in her agitation. Her teeth were chattering now, and a cool wind from the northeast had come up, but it did not sooth the furious smarting and burning of her whipped bare bottom.

Swishhh! The thirteenth stroke was given after a pause of thirty seconds, during most of which time Master Dickon had kept the rod pressed against the area he had selected for his cut. But it was backhanded, from left to right, with the full strength of wrist, and his dexterity made her cry out again, hoarsely and wordlessly, once again turning her tearstained contorted face back over her shoulder to implore him with her agonized eyes.

Now he paused again, and with his left gauntleted hand rubbed his sweating forehead. He would have preferred to have been stripped to the waist, even cool as it was for a May morning, but it had been the edict of the Lord Chamberlain that he would wear this funeral garb to strike terror in the hearts of the young culprits.

Ten more lashes, Ariel thought to herself, Oh, dear God in heaven, give me strength, or let me faint under the birch so that I am not conscious of my shame and my suffering.

But he let her agonize there for a full minute before he applied the fourteenth stroke of the rod, and this one too slashed across the base of her bottom but from right to left.

“AIIIII! OHH, I CANNOT STAND SUCH PAIN!!!”

Her call was raucous, and her body clashed against the wooden post as she lunged forward, twisting her hips, rubbing her pussy furiously and lewdly against the chafing wood. Her fingernails dug into the post, as she jerked at her wrists, and the cords had bitten so deeply so that the flesh was bluish and swollen.

“Fourteen,” Tom enumerated in a clear voice.

Only nine left now. If only he would whip her somewheres else, she prayed. But Master Dickon wished to crown his handiwork with so able a thrashing as would send this arrogant and fancy jade off to the colonies with a bottom well marked to show her future master what an undisciplined baggage she was. Swiftly this time, the fifteenth lash was delivered, over the tops of Ariel's squirming hips, and a sobbing wail was torn from her, as she seemed to shift from foot to foot in a jerky, dance-like step that drew coarse jeers and hoarse, lascivious comments from the gaping audience.

Again she raised her eyes to the skies, but there was no sun to shine upon her. The air was cooler now, but again it could not alleviate the agony of her burning bottom. Even to move from foot to foot was torment, even to stress her muscles of calves and thighs cost her acute torture as the muscles of her bottom twitched and contracted, sending frightful new waves of suffering through the now livid, violently striated flesh. Only here and there, in obscenely pale patches, could untouched flesh be seen on the shuddering oval cheeks of her naked behind.

By way of raillery at her weakening to his strength, Master Dickon applied the next blow squarely across the middle of her naked bum, and she twisted frantically, shaking herself as if to disperse the burning fury of the switches; her head turned to one side, and a sobbing cry of “Oh God, oh God, pity a helpless girl who suffers beyond her due!”

And from the second floor of the palace, Charlotte Sophia gloatingly cried out, “You have not yet begun to know what suffering is, you shameless young Dirne! Master Dickon, I wish to see the blood spurt from that waggling backside!”

The hooded executioner turned and bowed, saluted with the frayed rod. Casting it aside, he went to the brine-filled buckets and chose a bulkier birch, swished it in the air, and then planted himself to the left of the now sobbing, writhing, half-fainting red-haired prisoner.

With all his strength, he now delivered each of the remaining cuts, with hardly a pause between each, across the broadest curves of those bewitchingly impudent, resilient hillocks of Callyphygian beauty, and under each Ariel Clarisson shrieked like a lost soul, capering, dancing from foot to foot, twisting her ravaged, teardrowned face back to implore mercy, sobbing, groaning through her choking plaints, as blood pearled indeed from the many savage crisscrossings of the striata dealt by those biting switches.