O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas

by Gordon Stables

A silence deep as death fell on all the crowd.

Then there was a rush for me. Spears were at my breast and I expected only instant death, when the king sprang to my rescue and all fell back.

If I had knelt to him and begged his pardon, even then I might have been forgiven.

But an English youth to sue on his knees for mercy from a savage! Nay, it was not to be thought of.

The king sat down.

The king was silent for a space of time. The king took more rum.

Then he ordered ropes of skin to be brought, and I was bound hand and foot and taken away to a loathsome dungeon.

I knew I was to die next day, and I longed for sunrise to have it past, for I suffered excruciating agony from the tightness of the cords that bound me.

The time came. I was to form part in a procession, and did; I was carried shoulder-high, lying on my back on a kind of bark tray, amid tom-tom beating, howling, shrieking, and a deal of capering and dancing that at any other time I should have laughed most heartily at.