“Ah,” said the mocking voice behind him, “that’s right. You see how it’s done now. They run that back from inside, sudden-like, some time when you don’t expect it; and in come the twisting branches that lay hold of you, and out you go to make him a nice meal. Ha! ha! ha!”
Leonard turned and stared in helpless horror. Was it possible that there was such cold-blooded, fiendish cruelty in the world? Yet—he remembered the fate of the poor puma. He trembled, and turned sick and faint; while the one in the next cell continued to jeer and mock at him.
“Where is your lightning-wand, my lord? Why have you not brought it to try it on the tree? You managed to get me brought here; and now you’ve managed to get here yourself!”
“I got you brought here? How? What then are you doing here?” Leonard asked, his surprise overcoming his disgust.
“What am I doing here? Why, the same as you—waiting in ‘the devil-tree’s larder’ till I’m given to him for a meal—as you will be. And it’s all through you; because you killed some of us and we others ran away; this is what they do with us.”
Leonard shuddered again, while the man went to the stream of water that, as in Leonard’s cell, was pouring down from a pipe above, and, filling the pitcher, took a long drink.
“Makes you thirsty, this sort of thing,” he said, with another jeering laugh. “You’ll find that water there mighty handy if they let you stay here long enough. Ha! ha! ha!”
The man was evidently in a state of high fever. The place was full of fœtid odours given off by the foul tree; and, apart from that, the want of sleep would superinduce fever, if, indeed, it did not drive mad the wretched occupants of the cells; for who could sleep for more than a minute or two at a time in one of those dens, where, at any moment, the door might be run back and the miserable prisoner delivered over to the fatal branches? It was this constant, ever-present dread that banished sleep, and must inevitably end in madness for the victims, provided they were kept there long enough.
Then the thought flashed upon him that Ulama also might be an occupant of one of these awful cells; and at that such a burst of grief and agony came over him that he hid his face within his hands and groaned aloud.
“Yah! don’t give way like that, my lord. Being here’s not so bad when once you’re used to it! Look at me! You don’t see me worry and cry like a great girl. I take it quietly; I’ve been too used to seeing others here. Many’s the time I’ve had the pulling back of these doors and have seen a man or a woman hauled out squealing and kicking like an animal going to be killed; and I’ve laughed at them. I thought it such fun! And now those who used to help me and laugh with me, they’re waiting to see how I like it; and they will laugh at me, too, just the same. But I don’t care. What does it matter? It’s nothing, I tell you, when you’re as used to it as I am.”