The headmaster’s punishments were dreaded.
He did not use a cane, but a rod consisting of four thin, flexible wands, tied at one end to make a handle.
The head was an old boy of Winchester, and his instrument of punishment was adapted from the model used at his old school.
Each whack of this implement supplied four separate strokes, each of which, applied to the bare bottom, stung like the bite of a scorpion, so my Uncle dramatically put it.
(I don’t think that he had ever been stung by a scorpion, so I don’t know how he could make this comparison.)