Sapazani nodded. Willing, ferocious hands were upon Sebela. He was dragged to the glowing wood and stretched right against it, yet not before with his only available weapons he had bitten two fingers of one of his torturers nearly off.
“Is it warm enough, Sebela?” said the chief. “If it is, name, then, the other man who helped thee to sell thy father’s house to the whites.”
The wretched victim writhed hideously in the grasp of those who held him, indeed, so powerful were his struggles that it was all they could do to hold him down at all. He uttered no cry, but his wet face and rolling eyeballs and bared teeth testified to the agony he was undergoing. The spectators, their most savage passions aroused, gazed gloatingly on.
“Name him, name him, Sebela, that thy torments may cease,” repeated Sapazani.
“Pandulu.”
The name burst forth in a tone that was half gasp, half shriek. The agony of the wretch had become too great for the endurance of even a barbarian. At a sign from the chief he was dragged away from the fire.
“That for the one,” said the latter. “Now for the other. Name the other, Sebela.”
“There was no other, Nkose.”
“No other? What? Was the fire not hot enough? Take him back.”
But before the order could be carried out the victim decided that he could not face further torment. Every nerve in his body was throbbing with the agony he was undergoing.