Instinctively I kept my eyes tightly 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 colour. The hot iron had been thrown down and was frizzling on the wet ground a few paces from me.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Measured some weeks later by Dr. Wilson.
CHAPTER LXXXV
Bleeding all over—Insulted and spat upon—"Kill him!"—Urging on the executioner—Refusal to stoop—An unpleasant sword exercise—The execution suspended.
My position as I stood with my legs wide apart, with my back, hands and legs bleeding, and seeing everything of a ghastly red tinge; amidst the deafening, maddening noise of gong, drum, cymbals and horn; insulted, spat upon by the crowd, and with Nerba holding me so tight by my hair as to tear handfuls of it from my scalp, was one in which I cannot wish even my bitterest enemies to find themselves. All I was able to do was to remain calm and composed and to watch 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.