Wreckers Must Breathe by Hammond Innes

the dock, the doctor turned to me. ‘Vat ’appened?’ he demanded. I told him. He nodded. ‘Your friend vill be in troble,’ he said.
    A sudden hush fell over the men on the dockside. I looked up. The Gestapo man—Fulke—had arrived. Like shadows the men seemed to melt away. He descended to the bottom of the dock. ‘I hear that man—’ he indicated Logan—‘has knocked down an officer of the guard. Is that right?’ He spoke in German, and there was a kind of eagerness in his eyes that it was impossible to mistake. The man was a sadist.
    â€˜That is true,’ the doctor replied. ‘But he did it because——’
    â€˜The reason does not interest me,’ snapped Fulke. He turned to the guard. ‘Take that man to the guard-room. Strap him to the triangle. I’ll teach prisoners to knock down officers of the Fuehrer’s navy. Get Lodermann. He is to use the steel-cored whip. I will be along in a few minutes. And take this man with you.’ He nodded in my direction. ‘It will doubtless be instructive for him to see how we maintain discipline.’
    The guard saluted and turned away, at the same time indicating that I was to follow him. They took Big Logan from his work and marched him along the dock gallery and up the ramp to the guard-room. I went with them, a horrible empty sickness in the pit of my stomach. Behind me, as I left the dock, I heard the doctor saying, ‘You’re not going to have that man flogged with a steel-cored whip, surely? He’s not well, mentally? Anyway, his action was not unjustified.’ There followed a sharp altercation between the two, but I was by then too far away to hear what was said. In that moment I was thankful to know that there was one man in the place with some human understanding.
    But I knew it was useless to expect that he would be able to prevent the flogging. The Gestapo’s commands were law, and I was convinced that this man Fulke wanted to see Logan flogged. I had heard tales from refugees of floggings in concentration camps with this same steel-cored whip. It cut a man’s back to ribbons and he seldom survived the full number of strokes to which he was sentenced. Something seemed to cry out with agony inside me. As I watched them strip Big Logan and tie him to the heavy iron triangle in the guard-room, I think I went through almost as much mental agony as Logan would go through physical agony later. I felt entirely responsible for what had happened, and it was pitiful to see Logan’s docility. He did not seem to understand what was happening. Stripped, his terrific physique was even more evident. I felt that if he cared to let himself go, he could have killed every member of the guard with his bare hands, and I longed to call out to him to do so. But what was the use?
    A big powerful seaman had taken the steel-cored whip from an oblong box. He had removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves. The bristles on the back of his thick neck gleamed in the electric light. He adjusted the position of the triangle so that the whip, which was short and knotted, would not catch the walls. The guard had been augmented to six men. The little Gestapo man whom we had first met had taken control. There was a deathly stillness in the room as the man with the whip made his dispositions. The clock on the wall ticked monotonously on as we waited for Fulke.
    At length he arrived. ‘Close the door!’ he ordered. Then he crossed the room and took up a position on the other side of the triangle. His narrow face shone with sweat and his eyes had a glassy stare. ‘Why did you strike an officer of the guard?’ he asked in English.
    Logan made no reply. It was as though he had not heard.
    Fulke’s hand shot out and he slapped Logan across the face. He did it with the back of his hand, so that a gold ring set with diamonds which he wore on his right hand scored Logan’s cheek.