This, I confess, put new thoughts into my head for a while; but I harped upon the same string still; and all that day I was uneasy to put my project in execution. Towards the evening the Scots merchant met me by accident in our walk about the town, and desired to speak with me: “I believe,” said he, “I have put you off your good design; I have been a little concerned about it since; for I abhor the idol and idolatry as much as you can do.”—“Truly,” said I, “you have put it off a little, as to the execution of it, but you have not put it all out of my thoughts; and, I believe, I shall do it still before I quit this place, though I were to be delivered up to them for satisfaction.”—“No, no,” said he, “God forbid they should deliver you up to such a crew of monsters! they shall not do that neither; that would be murdering you indeed.”—“Why,” said I, “how would they use me?”—“Use you!” said he: “I’ll tell you how they served a poor Russian, who affronted them in their worship just as you did, and whom they took prisoner, after they had lamed him with an arrow, that he could not run away: they took him and stripped him stark naked, and set him upon the top of the idol monster, and stood all round him, and shot as many arrows into him as would stick over his whole body; and then they burnt him, and all the arrows sticking in him, as a sacrifice to the idol.”—“And was this the same idol:” said I.—“Yes,” said he, “the very same.”—“Well,” said I, “I will tell you a story.” So I related the story of our men at Madagascar, and how they burnt and sacked the village there, and killed man, woman, and child, for their murdering one of our men, just as it is related before; and when I had done, I added, that I thought we ought to do so to this village.
He listened very attentively to the story; but when I talked of doing so to that village, said he, “You mistake very much; it was not this village, it was almost a hundred miles from this place; but it was the same idol, for they carry him about in procession all over the country.”—“Well,” said I, “then that idol ought to be punished for it; and it shall,” said I, “if I live this night out.”
In a word, finding me resolute, he liked the design, and told me, I should not go alone, but he would go with me; but he would go first, and bring a stout fellow, one of his countrymen, to go also with us; “and one,” said he, “as famous for his zeal as you can desire any one to be against such devilish things as these.” In a word, he brought me his comrade a Scotsman, whom he called Captain Richardson; and I gave him a full account of what I had seen, and also what I intended; and he told me readily, he would go with me, if it cost him his life. So we agreed to go, only we three. I had, indeed, proposed it to my partner, but he declined it. He said, he was ready to assist me to the utmost, and upon all occasions, for my defence; but that this was an adventure quite out of his way: so, I say, we resolved upon our work, only we three, and my man-servant, and to put it in execution that night about midnight, with all the secresy imaginable.
However, upon second thoughts, we were willing to delay it till the next night, because the caravan being to set forward in the morning, we supposed the governor could not pretend to give them any satisfaction upon us when we were out of his power. The Scots merchant, as steady in his resolution to enterprise it as bold in executing, brought me a Tartar’s robe or gown of sheep-skins, and a bonnet, with a bow and arrows, and had provided the same for himself and his countryman, that the people, if they saw us, should not be able to determine who we were.
All the first night we spent in mixing up some combustible matter with aqua-vitæ, gunpowder, and such other materials as we could get; and, having a good quantity of tar in a little pot, about an hour after night we set out upon our expedition.
We came to the place about eleven o’clock at night, and found that the people had not the least jealousy of danger attending their idol. The night was cloudy; yet the moon gave us light enough to see that the idol stood just in the same posture and place that it did before. The people seemed to be all at their rest; only, that in the great hut, or tent as we called it, where we saw the three priests, whom we mistook for butchers, we saw a light, and going up close to the door, we heard people talking, as if there were five or six of them; we concluded, therefore, that if we set wildfire to the idol, these men would come out immediately, and run up to the place to rescue it from the destruction that we intended for it; and what to do with them we knew not. Once we thought of carrying it away, and setting fire to it at a distance, but when we came to handle it we found it too bulky for our carriage; so we were at a loss again. The second Scotsman was for setting fire to the tent or hut, and knocking the creatures that were there on the head, when they came out; but I could not join with that; I was against killing them, if it was possible to be avoided. “Well then,” said the Scots merchant, “I will tell you what we will do; we will try to make them prisoners, tie their hands, and make them stand and see their idol destroyed.”
As it happened, we had twine or packthread enough about us, which we used to tie our fire-works together with; so we resolved to attack these people first, and with as little noise as we could. The first thing we did, we knocked at the door, when one of the priests coming to it, we immediately seized upon him, stopped his mouth, and tied his hands behind him, and led him to the idol, where we gagged him that he might not make a noise, tied his feet also together, and left him on the ground.
Two of us then waited at the door, expecting that another would come out to see what the matter was; but we waited so long till the third man came back to us; and then nobody coming out, we knocked again gently, and immediately out came two more, and we served them just in the same manner, but were obliged to go all with them, and lay them down by the idol some distance from one another; when going back we found two more were come out to the door, and a third stood behind them within the door. We seized the two, and immediately tied them, when the third stepping back, and crying out, my Scots merchant went in after him, and taking out a composition we had made, that would only smoke and stink, he set fire to it, and threw it in among them: by that time the other Scotsman and my man taking charge of the two men already bound, and tied together also by the arm, led them away to the idol, and left them there, to see if their idol would relieve them, making haste back to us.
When the furze we had thrown in had filled the hut with so much smoke that they were almost suffocated, we then threw in a small leather bag of another kind, which flamed like a candle, and following it in, we found there were but four people left, who, it seems, were two men and two women, and, as we supposed, had been about some of their diabolic sacrifices. They appeared, in short, frighted to death, at least so as to sit trembling and stupid, and not able to speak neither, for the smoke.
In a word, we took them, bound them as we had the other, and all without any noise, I should have said, we brought them out of the house, or hut, first; for, indeed, we were not able to bear the smoke any; more than they were. When we had done this, we carried them all together to the idol: when we came there we fell to work with him; and first we daubed him all over, and his robes also, with tar, and such other stuff as we had, which was tallow mixed with brimstone; then we stopped his eyes, and ears, and, mouth full of gunpowder; then we wrapped up a great piece of wildfire in his bonnet; and then sticking all the combustibles we had brought with us upon him, we looked about to see if we could find any thing else to help to burn him; when my Scotsman remembered that by the tent, or hut, where the men were, there lay a heap of dry forage, whether straw or rushes I do not remember: away he and the other Scotsman ran, and fetched their arms full of that. When we had done this, we took all our prisoners, and brought them, having untied their feet and ungagged their mouths, and made them stand up, and set them all before their monstrous idol, and then set fire to the whole.