The Whippingham College Saga, Part 6: Captain Lasher Saves The Day

  Of all the constituent houses which comprised the great and much respected Whippingham College (the strictest and most exclusive public school in all of England), perhaps Flagellators was the most liberal. St Nicholas-the-Self-Flagellator’s School for the Sons-of-Gentlefolk, to give it its full but never-used title, was the oldest established of the seven Whippingham houses, and (reflecting the fact that the house’s name was itself a nickname) had the unique tradition that every pupil was given a nickname by the house master on his first day and this nickname was used by all masters as well as by the other boys.

  Captain Silas Lasher V.C., the one-legged House Master and valiant war hero (his right leg had been bitten off by a shark when Lasher, then a Lieutenant, had leapt into the sea to rescue the ship’s cat, Geraldine, which had fallen overboard) was showing some prospective parents around the school and he had just explained the nickname tradition.

  ‘Naturally, all the masters have nicknames as well, but the boys are not permitted to use them, except on the last morning of their last term, since tradition decrees that a pupil may not be thrashed on his last morning at school. We also have a second tradition here at Flagellators: the other houses use letters to designate the boys’ dormitories. Here at Flagellators, each dormitory is named after a warship in the Royal Navy and the boys are encouraged to identify with their ship. For example, the lads in Victory dorm never ever lose a football or rugger game without incurring shame and severe punishment; the lads in Courageous dorm are renowned for their bravery in a scrap with the village oiks, even when vastly outnumbered; the lads in Warspite are incredibly aggressive to chaps from other houses; and the lads of Renown dorm are proud and arrogant beyond human belief.’

  ‘Which dormitory would young Mervyn be put into if he came to Flagellators?’ asked Mr Foreskynne-Whyper.
  ‘And what nickname would you give him, Captain Lasher?’ enquired his lady wife, Mrs Fanny Foreskynne-Whyper.
  ‘Oh that’s quite easy: we’d call him “Pudding-Head” and he’d obviously go into Repulse dorm,’ replied the gallant Captain with a winning smile. At this, little Mervyn Foreskynne-Whyper burst into tears, his huge effeminate moon-face wrinkled up in unhappiness like a rotting melon. Sensing he had made a slight faux pas, Captain Lasher playfully cuffed the youngster around the head, sending him crashing onto the gravel. ‘Only joking, Pudding-Head,’ he exclaimed, ‘I’d put you into Queen Elizabeth dorm really, with all the other nancy boys.’

  After Mrs and Mrs Foreskynne-Whyper had left holding the repellent, weeping Mervyn "Pudding-Head" Foreskynne-Whyper by the hand, Captain Silas Lasher, V.C., returned to his study. The bluff, uni-podial naval hero knew he was not the most tactful of chaps and he resolved to allow his deputy, Monsieur Jean-Claude “Nigger Lips” Chardonnay-Blanc, the Head of French Studies at Whippingham and the most ingratiating and self-satisfied teacher in Britain, to escort putative parents in future. ‘That little frog Nigger Lips could charm the back leg off a donkey,’ muttered the Captain to himself, as he scratched his stump.

  Although Captain Lasher was sometimes tactless in his blunt naval hero way of dealing with matters, he was a very astute judge of character, as anyone who was in Repulse dorm that night, up on the top floor of Flagellators Tower would have been able to verify. Rodney “Snaggletooth” D’Arcy-Crudsworth, the obese house bully, having just forced young Lord Arthur Augustus “Gumrot” Winchester-Biggleton, the skinniest boy in the house, to eat a whole tin of boot polish, was helping two of his brutish cronies, Patrick “Thicko” O’Connell-Burke and Boris “Snotty” Snotte-Wragge to suspend poor little Gumrot out of the window on a rope made of knotted sheets when tragedy struck. The knotted sheets parted and poor Winchester-Biggleton plunged three storeys to his death on the spiked railings below.

  ‘Crikey, Snaggletooth, that’s really torn it!’ exclaimed Samuel “Smegma” Sneerwell-Butts as he peered out of the dorm window at the twitching corpse of the late Lord Arthur.
  ‘You’ll be for it now, you chaps!’ observed Jeremiah “Mongo” Prendergast-Beaver, with his customary acumen and logic.
  ‘I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes when the Captain finds out what you’ve done,’ smirked the Honourable Boris “Bignuts” Bender-Wilkinson, the eldest son of the ugliest man in the South of England and the boy with the largest testicles in the whole of Whippingham College.
  ‘If anyone sneaks on Thicko, Snotty and me, it’ll be the last thing they do on this earth,’ blustered the house bully, his finger pointing at the other terrified lads of Repulse dormitory, Evelyn “Cunty” Kent-Watson, the Honourable Peregrine “Limpalong” Cassidy, Igor St John “Pansy” Potter-Potterton, Basil “Bender” McButtocke, Vladimir “Dracula” Impaler-Robinson and  Eddie “the Goat” Flitterton-Warbottle.

  At that moment, the door to Repulse dorm burst open and Captain Lasher entered, accompanied by Flagellators’ Head Prefect, the handsome young Viscount Charles Edward de Quincy “Arselicker” Fothergill of Ashby-de-la-Zouche.

  ‘It was an accident sir,’ chorused Snaggletooth, Thicko and Snotty. ‘Gumrot fell out of the window by accident, sir. No one did it.’
  ‘Yes, sir, it was an accident, no one did it,’ echoed the fearful Smegma, Mongo, Bignuts, Cunty, Limpalong, Pansy, Bender and Dracula.
  ‘I see,’ said Captain Lasher V.C., his eagle eyes taking in the fact that Rodney “Snaggletooth” D’Arcy-Crudsworth was holding a torn black boot polish stained knotted sheet in one hand. ‘A likely story. You lot really are a total shower.’
  ‘Was it an accident, Flitterton-Warbottle? You can trust me, Goat old chap,’ the aristocratic Head Prefect enquired of little Eddie the Goat, who was shivering uncontrollably in the corner.
  ‘Please, Arselicker old chap, Snaggletooth did it. He’s a rotten bully and he forced Gumrot to eat a tin of boot polish first as well,’ the wretched lad blurted out bravely.

  With a positively minotaurian cry of rage, the overweight school bully rushed to grab Eddie the Goat, tripped over Vladimir “Dracula” Impaler-Robinson’s outstretched leg and went flying out of the window to land on the spiked railings next to the body of his hapless victim, the late little Gumrot. Snaggletooth’s terrible death-cry floated up on the night air to the group in Repulse dormitory.

  ‘Quick thinking, Impaler-Johnson,’ snapped Captain Lasher in his bluff no-nonsense naval fashion. ‘Well done! Come and see me in the morning and I’ll award you the House Medal for Bravery. You too, Flitterton-Warbottle. Now, that’s enough excitement for one night, lads. Everyone go and brush their teeth and get into your pyjamas. Lights out in ten minutes.’ And with that, the Captain limped out of Repulse dormitory.

  ‘You heard what the Captain said, jump to it, you men,’ the handsome Head Prefect of Flagellators ordered. ‘Be thankful you have a true gentleman as your house master, the Reverend Psaydysste-Streke of Thrashmore Hall would have clapped the lot of you in irons if this had happened in his house.’
  ‘You’re right, Arselicker. God bless Captain Lasher!’
  ‘Oh, by the way, Thicko and Snotty,’ smiled the young Viscount, ‘don’t think I don’t know you two were involved. Be down in my study in five minutes and I shall give you six strokes each with my slap-stick, followed by a half-hour’s ice-cold shower. And you’re both on duty cleaning up the railings in the morning.’
  ‘Thank you, Arselicker,’ the two boys mumbled, grateful that they were getting off so lightly, not knowing that the justice-loving Viscount would be using a sawn-off hockey stick with the nail in it, instead of his usual prefect’s approved weapon. 

    Back in his study, Captain S.Lasher, V.C., telephoned the High Master to explain the double death. Septimus Seiss-Urquart, D.D., was not very pleased to be disturbed as he was half-way through a thrilling blowjob from his secretary, the ever-obliging Miss Spankington, at the time. After receiving an ear-bashing, Lasher telephoned old Dr Jones down in the village to ask him to make out the death certificates as quickly as possible.

  ‘Ruptured appendix, both of them, Captain Lasher? Most unusual coincidence, but these things happen. You’ll have my payment available in cash, as usual.’ How the singsong voice of that slimy little Welsh git grated on the good Captain’s ears, but where else could you get such discreet service?

  With a sad heart, the House Master of Flagellators took out two of the College pre-printed condolence letters, top-and-tailed them with the pupils’ names and cause of death and called for his manservant to take them down to the main post office so as to catch the night mail to London. He felt it was most important that a condolence letter should reach parents before the famous Whippingham College Hearse drew up outside their house bearing the familiar box of pine and its pathetic contents.