The American shuddered at this proposition. "On what terms?" he asked.
"Listen!" he said, laying a stress on every word, and darting at him a glance which made him tremble to the marrow. "My conditions are these. I am master of all your lives; they belong to me; I can prolong or cut them short without the slightest opposition from you; but, I hardly know why," he added, with a sardonic smile, "I feel merciful today; your child shall live. Still, remember this; whatever the nature of the torture I inflict on you, at the first cry you utter, your child shall be strangled. You have it in your power to save her if you will."
"I accept," the other answered. "What do I care for the most atrocious torture, so long as my child lives?"
A sinister smile played round the chief's lips. "It is well," he said.
"One word more."
"Speak."
"Grant me a single favour; let me give a last kiss to this poor creature."
"Give him his child," the chief commanded.
An Indian presented the little girl to the wretched man. The innocent, as if comprehending what was taking place, put her arms round her father's neck, and burst into tears. The latter, frightfully bound as he was, could only bestow kisses on her, into which his whole soul passed. The scene had something hideous about it; it resembled a witches' Sabbath. The five men fastened naked to trees, the children twisting on the burning charcoal, and uttering piercing cries, and these stoical Indians, illumined by the ruddy glow of the fire, completed the most fearful picture that the wildest imagination could have invented.
"Enough," Natah Otann said.