The Wasp, 1918 · page 53 of 330
The Wasp — 1918 — page 53: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page appears to be from a serialized adventure story rather than a political cartoon. It depicts a dialogue between James Burnham and a desperate young boy named Henry Todd, who is threatening mutiny aboard a merchant vessel called the *Virtue*. The boy, apparently mistreated by Captain Smith and the crew, proposes helping Burnham (seemingly a pirate or fugitive) escape in exchange for a berth on a pirate ship. Todd expresses willingness to commit violence—swabbing "bloody decks" and assisting in revenge against his current officers. The satire lies in the ironic contrast: Todd claims Bible-reading parents and honest upbringing, yet eagerly volunteers for piracy and murder. This likely mocks either naive idealism about adventure, working-class desperation, or hypocrisy about morality—though without more context about *The Wasp's* satirical targets, the precise point remains unclear. The narrative itself appears to be serialized fiction rather than a standalone satirical piece.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
We se iron; but James Burnham felt nothing but a scornful interest in him. ““ If they don’t hang ye,”’ whispered the boy, “‘ will ye git me a berth aboard a pirate ship ? — I git starved here, an’ I git kicked. Let me be a pirate, sir, so’s some day I kin lay this old devil’s tub aboard an’ see the cap’n an’ Winch an’ the cook walk the plank an’ sink into the everlastin’ sea! Ill help ye git away, Cap'n Hicks, sir. When we git nigh some land Pl victual a boat.” Burnham eyed him with a ae quizzical glance. “So you would ship with a ee would - you, my lad?” he said. Todd assured him that he would, na gladly, though his parents had been honest folk and he had been brought up to read in the Bible every day. Hewould 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 kLrought aon to Burnham that the green hills of St. Kitts were in sight, and that the master expected to Comicnooks.com