"We don't want any nonsense about this," said Baker then. "You can either drink that dose now or the clubs will fall."
The instant he had spoken every student brought his club down hard upon the floor close to Miller's feet. The man fairly danced in an agony of fear, and a part of the liquor fell from the glass.
"Drink!" thundered Baker.
The cigar dealer then put the glass to his lips and poured it down with one gulp. Baker nodded in a satisfied way.
"Now put him in the prisoner's chair!" he said.
Two of the students then led Miller trembling and more than half convinced that he had taken deadly poison, to the swing in which the neophytes had been drawn up to the ceiling.
Miller was seated in the chains and told to grip the chain and then the windlass was worked, and he was raised three or four feet from the floor.
The students grouped themselves in front of him, seated on chairs; Baker alone remained standing.
It seemed to Miller then as if everybody moved very slowly. He thought he could count a hundred between every two words that were uttered. Before many minutes had passed it seemed to him as if he had been a year in this place.
This sensation on his part was due to the liquor he had drunk. It was a harmless preparation of hasheesh, a well-known Indian drug that, taken in sufficient quantities, is poisonous, but in small doses produces simply a half dream-like effect upon the mind that causes the time to seem intolerably long.