The Pombo strode up to me, brandishing the ghastly implement. He seemed reluctant, but the Lamas around him urged him on, lifting the man's arm toward me.
"You have come to this country to see" (alluding to what I had stated the previous day—viz., that I was a traveller and pilgrim, and had only come to see the country). "This, then, is the punishment for you!" and with these dreadful words the Pombo raised his arm and placed the red-hot iron bar parallel to, and about an inch or two from, my eyeballs, and all but touching my nose.
Instinctively I kept my eyes closed, but the heat was so intense that it seemed as if my eyes, the left one especially, were being desiccated and my nose scorched.
Though the time seemed interminable, I do not think that the heated bar was before my eyes actually longer than thirty seconds or so. Yet it was quite long enough, for, when I lifted my aching eyelids, I saw everything as in a red mist. My left eye was frightfully painful, and every few seconds it seemed as if something in front of it obscured its vision. With the right eye I could still see fairly well, except that everything, as I have said, looked red instead of its usual color. The hot iron was then thrown down, and was frizzling on the wet ground a few paces from me.
My position was not enviable, as I stood with my legs wide apart, with my back, hands, and legs bleeding, and my sight injured. This amid the deafening, maddening noise of the gong, drum, cymbals, and horn; insulted, spat upon by the crowd, and with Nerba holding me so tight by my hair that he tore handfuls of it from my scalp. All I could do was to remain calm and composed, and to await with apparent unconcern the preparations for the next sufferings to be inflicted upon me.
"Miumta nani sehko!" (Kill him with a rifle!) shouted a hoarse voice.
A matchlock was now being loaded by a soldier, and such was the quantity of gunpowder they placed in the barrel that [it] made sure whoever fired it would have his head blown off. It was with a certain amount of satisfaction that I saw it handed over to the Pombo. That official placed the side of the weapon against my forehead with the muzzle pointing skyward. Then a soldier, leaning down, applied fire to the fusee. Eventually there was a loud report, which gave my head a severe shock. The overloaded matchlock flew clean out of the Pombo's hand, much to everybody's surprise. I forced myself to laugh. The tantalizing failure of every attempt they made to hurt me drove the crowd to the highest pitch of fury.
"Ta kossaton, ta kossaton!" (Kill him, kill him!) exclaimed fierce voices all around me. "Ngala mangbo shidak majidan!" (We cannot frighten him!) "Ta kossaton, ta kossaton!" (Kill him, kill him!) The whole valley resounded with these ferocious cries.
A huge two-handed sword was now handed to the Pombo, who drew it out of its sheath.
"Kill him, kill him!" shouted the mob once more, urging on the executioner, who seemed quite reluctant to come forward.