The Wasp, 1913 · page 57 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 57: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page appears to be from a serialized narrative story rather than a political cartoon. It depicts a scene aboard a ship where a character named Henry Todd expresses willingness to abandon his current vessel, the *Virtue*, to serve with a pirate named Burnham instead. The satire likely targets **maritime labor conditions and religious hypocrisy**. Todd claims his pious upbringing—reading the Bible daily, honest parents—yet readily abandons virtue (the ship's symbolic name) to join piracy, suggesting that moral instruction fails against harsh working conditions under Captain Smith, Mr. Winch, and others. The brig *Virtue* versus the pirate's life represents a contrast between claimed respectability and actual circumstances. Burnham's skepticism ("So you would ship with a pirate?") underscores the absurdity of Todd's willingness. The reference to selling Burnham's "neck for a reward" indicates bounty hunting concerns. Without knowing *The Wasp's* publication date or broader context, the specific targets remain unclear, though the critique of shipboard authority and morality's emptiness appears evident.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
56 THE WASP walk the plank an’ sink into the everlastin’ sea! I’ll help ye git away, Cap’n Hicks, sir. When we git nigh some land I’ll victual a boat.” Burnham eyed him with a slanting, quizzical glance. “So you would ship with a pirate, would you, my lad?” he said. Todd assured him that he would, and gladly, though his parents had been honest folk and he had been brought up to read in the Bible every day. He would carry rum for any pirate afloat, he said, and clean their knives and load their pistols and swab up the bloody decks—anything, in fact, rather than continue to serve in the brig Virtue, with Captain Smith, Mr. Winch, and Sam, the black cook. Two days later Henry Todd brought word to Burnham that the green hills of St. Kitts were in sight, and that the master expected to make the little island of Nevis some time during the following day. “And where is it they intend to sell my neck for a reward?” asked Burnham. Comicnooks.com