“Trying to frighten you? Why, I haven’t even begun to frighten you yet. You told me one day you thought I must be the devil. Well, I am—for all purposes as far as you are concerned. Make up your mind to that.”
There was no great eagerness in Wagram’s mind to dispute this statement. He had spent a month in the power of this fiend, and scarcely a day had passed without some proof that if he were not already within the infernal regions he was at any rate well within the antechamber thereto. Apart from the fact that the conditions of his captivity had been more and more those of every conceivable harshness, he had been compelled to witness the most ghastly and horrifying sights, of which the blood tragedies of the cannibal slaughter-yard were not the worst. Other fiendish rites, hideous and obscene—hardly imaginable, in fact—he had been thrust into the very midst of; and now within that brief month it seemed that he must have lived for years in hell, and all at the bidding of this devil—his fellow-countryman. His health had suffered, his mind and spirit alike were becoming broken, and every moment he besieged high Heaven with supplications that deliverance—even through the gate of death—might be granted him. So far his tormentor had confined his malice to tortures that were mainly mental. He had been careful, too, to afford him no clue whatever as to the locality in which he was, or even as to the very name of this savage race. His own identity, of course, was undivulged.
“You have the whole situation in your own hands,” went on the latter. “You have only to place in mine the necessary letters that will bring your son and heir here. I’ll take care of the way of doing it, never fear, once I have your indisputable authority. Now—are you going to give it me?”
Something of the martyr’s resolution shone in Wagram’s face. Even the brutal savages who guarded him were struck by it, and uneasily stirred. They thought to descry some strange resemblance at that moment between the faces of the two men, between their dreaded oppressor and his—and their—helpless captive.
“No; I am not—not now, nor ever,” came the steadfast answer. “I will die first.”
Then that glaring paroxysm of rage swept over the other’s features, and his eyes seemed to start from his purpling face as he bent down and hissed rather than whispered:
“Then you shall. By God, you shall!” At a sign the two savages pounced upon their prisoner, and flung him face downwards upon the ground. They were muscular ruffians, and he was weakened by ill-treatment and anxiety. Others flocked into the hut in obedience to a call, and in a moment he was pinioned with thongs, his feet being left free enough to enable him to walk with short steps. They dragged him forth into the open, and he found himself staggering along in their midst. Then he realised what his doom was to be. He had travelled this way before, to his horror and sorrow. They were taking him to the human slaughter-yard.
There was the palisade, the stunted trees, and the horrible heads impaled upon them. The effluvium was acrid, sickening. Many hands gripped him, and before he could offer the slightest resistance he was bound down upon one of the blood-stained blocks, with throat upturned, distended, ready for the murderous knife.
In that terrible moment, expecting death amid every circumstance of agony and ignominy, a vista of his past life opened to his brain—opened with a quick flash. This, then, was what his quest had brought him to—his quest which, following the strong voice of conscience, he had undertaken and had prosecuted to his own detriment. Well, what mattered it? His son—his only son—had been left in strong and careful hands. He would carry on his life duties as he himself would have had him do. Then more sacred thoughts succeeded. He trusted he was ready.
A black fiend stood over him, and had already raised the horrible crooked knife; already he seemed to feel it shearing through nerve and artery. But it was stayed.