The former worked himself into a kind of frenzied passion. Gripping me by a wrist, he jerked me first in one direction, then in another, sometimes so violently that my head flew backward and forward like a weather-cock in the wind.
"We’ll have the truth from you!" he shouted. "I’ll have it, though I must tear it from you with red-hot irons."
"You’ll speak or die," he answered. "And I’ll see to it that death does not come easy!"
All that day, they badgered me and persecuted me with questions. And in the end, when the sun was setting, they gave it up, and decided to put me to death.
Mine was a strange fate, in very truth; and now, when I look back upon that hour, I marvel that I took it all so calmly. For it was my destiny to sit by the camp-fire, whilst our evening meal of maize and manioc was cooking, and hear them discuss among themselves how I should be done to death.
Trust was all for rough-and-ready methods, in keeping with the blunt character of the man; Amos, for cold, deliberate torture; whereas Forsyth would bind me to a tree and leave me in the midst of that great wilderness to starve.
It was Mr. Forsyth’s vote that was carried; and now that I knew the manner of my death, I was filled with cold fear, though till then I had borne my ordeal with a fortitude that surprised even myself.
And bound I was, then and there, to a stout palm-tree that stood by itself a little distance from the margin of the forest. For rope they used a kind of creeper that was common in the woods, and not only was this as strong as a ship’s hawser, but so hard and tied so tightly that it cut into my legs and arms like bands of steel.
[Illustration: "AND BOUND I WAS, THEN AND THERE, TO A STOUT PALM TREE, A LITTLE DISTANCE FROM THE MARGIN OF THE FOREST."]
In such a manner was I doomed. For an hour or so I watched those three dread men, all so different, alike in nothing but their devilry, sitting together around the fire, talking in low voices, even pleasantly, as if to do murder were an every-day affair.
Then they lay down to sleep, and both Trust and Amos were soon snoring; whereas I was left, already athirst and hungry, to await the approach of a terrible and lingering death.
That night and those which followed will live always in my memory. I watched the moon rise, wondrous round and white and large, behind the rounded hill upon which stood Cahazaxa’s Temple. The stars, which had been shining in their millions, faded in the moonshine, all save one bright planet in the sky above me. And there arose a mist, in which I thought there was something ghostly, upon the plain where the long grass stood like corn ready for the cutting. And behind me, as if striving to enfold me in an overpowering, stifling embrace, was the dark, deadly forest that cut me off from all and everything I loved.