For some hours this cramped and painful locomotion continued, the barbarous horde carrying severed heads on their spear-points, and taking a delight in impressing upon their prisoners what lay in store for them. At length, towards sundown, they halted, and the prisoners were flung brutally to the ground in such heavy fashion as to knock all the breath out of their bodies. The pity was that this did not happen altogether, they had bitter reason to think, for now they saw a fire being kindled and blown up into a red, roaring flame. The while, thongs had been thrown over the limb of a tree. Their time had come.
Mushâd, with two or three others, now approached them.
“What was my promise to you, ye swine?” he began. “Was it not that ye should hang by the heels, that your eyes should be scooped out, and live coals placed in the sockets? Behold. The preparations are even now being made. How like ye them?”
“We like them not at all, O chief,” answered Haviland, desperate. “See, now, you are a brave man, and we have fought you fair and you have conquered. We expect death, but we English are not accustomed to torture. Put us therefore to a swift death.”
“Ha! Now ye cry for mercy, but before you laughed! It is well,” answered Mushâd. “Yet ye shall not obtain it. What of all my fighting men ye have slain, also many of my slaves?” And, turning, he beckoned to four savage-looking negroes. “Him first,” pointing to Haviland.
He was as powerless to move as a log. They seized him by the neck and dragged him towards one of the trees whereon a noose dangled. Their knives were drawn, and as they dragged him along he could see another ruffian kneeling by the fire, extracting a great glowing ember with a pair of rude tongs. Utterly powerless to struggle in his bonds, he felt the noose tightened round his ankles; then he was hauled up, swinging head downwards from the bough. His head was bursting with the rush of blood to it, and yet with his starting eyes he could see the fiend-like forms of his black torturers standing by him with the knife, and the red glowing embers.