The Wasp, 1913 · page 62 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 62: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page appears to be from a serialized adventure narrative rather than a political cartoon. It depicts a scene where a character named James Burnham and a boy named Henry Todd have escaped from a ship called the *Virtue* in a stolen boat. The boy, impressed by their escape and Burnham's seamanship, enthusiastically asks to become a pirate with him. Burnham responds indignantly, denying he's a pirate and asserting his respectable identity. The satire likely targets **respectable men engaged in morally questionable acts**—Burnham has clearly stolen a boat and fled a vessel, yet vehemently rejects the "pirate" label while claiming honest status. The humor lies in this contradiction: his actions suggest piracy, but he clings to respectability through mere denial and a name. Without additional context about *The Wasp*'s publication date or satirical targets, the specific social commentary remains unclear, though it appears to mock hypocrisy and self-deception among the supposedly virtuous.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP 61 upon the brightening sea. The brig was nowhere in sight, and for this he thanked his stars. He awoke Henry Todd, gave him the tiller for a little while, and employed his brief leisure in eat- ing ship’s biscuit and drinking stale water. Re- freshed, he took the tiller again and let the lad eat and drink. The island developed before them momentarily. The boy gazed eagerly forward at the climbing for- ests of green, at the low white surf riding in to the lilac sands, at the slender cocoanut-trees between the sea and the forests. He turned and gazed at Burn- ham with awe and admiration in his doglike eyes. There was a fine color in his wasted cheeks. “Praise be to Heaven we're clear o’ the brig Virtue!’ he cried. “An’ ye’ll let me bea pirate with ye, sir? Ye give me yer word on it, cap’n. I got ye the boat, sir, an’ never a hitch.” “What’s all this talk about a pirate, you fool?” exclaimed the man, bending a terrific glance upon ‘ poor Todd. “I am no more a pirate than you are. My name is Burnham, James Burnham.” Comichooks.com