The Wasp, 1918 · page 270 of 330
The Wasp — 1918 — page 270: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page appears to be **prose fiction or serialized narrative** rather than a political cartoon. It describes a violent mutiny aboard the ship *Virtue*, climaxing in hand-to-hand combat between the ship's cook (described in explicitly racist terms as "the huge negro") and crew member James Burnham. The text uses period-typical dehumanizing language regarding the Black cook, portraying him as a dangerous, barely-controllable force despite his injuries. The narrative frames his death by Burnham's sword as justified resolution. **Context we'd miss**: This likely reflects 19th-century anxieties about shipboard racial violence and mutiny. The story's racial stereotyping and its celebration of a white character's triumph over a Black antagonist would have appealed to *The Wasp's* contemporary audience, though such content is now recognized as offensive propaganda. The page contains **no visible cartoon imagery**—it's text-only narrative content.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP 261 of thie brig’s old crew hastened to obey the order. Suddenly the splinters of the door were driven outward and the iron fire-box of the stove, with fire in its belly, was hurled through the smoking maw. It struck a member of the bucket-brigade full in the chest and hurled him to the deck crushed and burned. | : After the stove came the huge negro himself, with a bar of iron in his right hand, his left arm hanging limp, and blood streaming down his face. He brained the wounded and prostrate New Englander, then dashed at James Burnham. Half a dozen knives were thrown, and though two of them found their mark, the maddened negro neither halted nor swerved. Burnham had his straight sword in his hand. He sprang lightly aside, turned quicker than it can be told, and lunged with all his weight behind the silver hilt. ‘That was the end of the Virtue’s gigantic cook. ‘The fire in the shattered deck-house was extinguished. The brig had been taken with comparatively little bloodshed, thanks to the mutinous condition of her crew. In all, only _ seven of her original company had been killed, including Smith}, Winch, the cook, and the fellow ~whom the cook had crushed with the stove. ee ee ee ee ee ats oe wee ee ee ee ee comichbooks.com