Still, the rough glass phial, with odd metal bands around its neck, had a fascination for me. I picked it up again, and tilted it idly back and forth in my hand, watching the slimy brown fluid, the color of poppy-juice, slip along its sides.
Hilyard smoked on imperturbably. The color mounted under his bronzed skin up to the light rings of his hair; there was a momentary angry flash in his pale blue eyes, but it was only for an instant.
"Perhaps you would like to try it, since you are so skeptical," he said, grimly.
"Thanks, I have no wish to poison myself, and I have no doubt it is a poison; but what I do doubt is the remarkable qualities you claim for it. How did you come across the vile stuff, anyway?"
Hilyard stretched himself comfortably in his chair, and took his beloved pipe from his handsome mouth. "Oh! well, you know," he said, lazily, "I don't claim to be a Stanley by any means, but I did go a good bit into Africa. I wasn't bent on discovering anything, and I loafed around, and shot big game when there was any to shoot, and I learned some odd things from those devils of witch-doctors, as well as a few on my own account. You remember my old craze for medicine and chemistry?"
"I fell in with a tribe of savages who interested me immensely. The art of torture was brought to a perfection among them that would have made the persecutors of the Inquisition turn green with envy. It was refined torture, such as one would not expect to see save among those who possessed mental powers equal to their cruelty. No decapitations, no stranglings, among these delicate fiends, I can assure you; nor were they satisfied with a day's torment, that should culminate in death. Captives were kept for weeks, frequently for months: the wounds made by one day's torture were dressed at night, and stimulating drink given to keep up the strength, that they might endure for a longer period. It was the custom to deliver prisoners or offenders to the family of the chief or king for the first day's torment; then down through the various nobles, or what corresponded to the aristocracy (and I assure you the class distinctions were as closely drawn as in May-Fair), until, if the unfortunate possessed a fine physique, it was not unusual for almost every family in the tribe to have had a day's amusement with him; and it was considered a point of honor not to actually take life, but rather let it spend itself to the last drop, in agonies undreamed of among what we call the civilized, while to invent some new and horrible form of torture conferred an honor upon the discoverer such as we give men who have made some wonderful advance in art or science.
"'How could I endure such sights?' Oh! well, one gets hardened to anything, you know, and to tell the truth, I was in search of a new sensation, and I found it. I watched with as much fascination as the savages—no, more—for it was new to me and old to them. Oh! come, Lewis, you needn't draw off your chair; and that reproving, Sunday-school expression is rather refreshing from a man who upholds vivisection. I tell you candidly that there is nothing on earth comparable to the fearful, curious combination of pleasure and horror with which one watches torture one is powerless to stop. It is morbid, and probably loathsome. No. It is not morbid, after all; it is natural, and not a diseased state of mind. Have you never seen a sweet little child, with a face like an angel, pull the wings from a butterfly, or half kill a pet animal, and laugh joyfully when it writhed about? I have. The natural man loves bloodshed, and loves to hurt men and creatures. It is bred in the bone with all of us, only, as far as the body is concerned, this love is an almost impotent factor in modern civilization, for we have deified the soul and intellect to such an extent, that it is them we seek to goad and wound, when the lust of cruelty oppresses us, since they have grown to be considered the more important part; and we know, too, that the embittered soul avenges itself upon its own body, so that we strike the subtler blow. What we call teasing, is the most diluted form of the appetite. Well, this is wide of the mark, I suppose. At any rate, my dusky friends, presumably having no sensitive souls to attack, did their very best with their enemies' bodies, and as I was saying, theirs was no mean accomplishment in that line.
"I am not going to wound your susceptibilities by describing some of the functions which I have witnessed under that blazing sun. I will only tell you that during one especial occasion of rejoicing, a feast was given after a victory over a neighboring tribe, when the bound captives were piled together in black, shining heaps, that had a constant vermicular movement, each human pile guarded by a soldier. The chief at whose right hand I sat, being filled with joy, as well as rather too much drink, began boasting to me of the glories of his tribe, of his possessions, of the valor of his warriors, and above all of the great wisdom and learning of his medicine-man, who was beyond all wizards, and upon whom witchcraft was powerless, and who prepared a poison for such of the chief's enemies as it was not expedient to openly destroy; and this poison, he explained to me, was of a secret and mysterious nature, and unknown to any other tribe.
"My curiosity was somewhat aroused, and I questioned him, whereupon he told me that the drug, being tasteless, was given in food or drink, and that the victim was seized with a terrible and immeasurable sadness and depth of despair, in which life appeared too horrible to endure, and which the unfortunate always ended by seizing a weapon of some sort and killing himself; and the chief, being of an inquiring mind, had caused the poison to be administered to a man who was carefully guarded and allowed no weapon.
"'And what did he do?' I queried, for the chief assured me that the drug itself did not produce death, but only caused an irresistible desire for it.