"The degrees of torture are five, which are inflicted in turn," Perez answered briskly. "First, the being threatened to be tortured; secondly, being carried to the place of torture; thirdly, by stripping and binding; fourthly, the being hoisted on the rack; fifthly, squassation.
"The stripping is performed without any regard to humanity or honour, not only to men, but to women and virgins, though the most virtuous and chaste, of whom they have sometimes many in their prison at Seville. For they cause them to be stripped even to their very shifts, which they afterwards take off, forgive the expression, and then put on them straight linen drawers, and then make their arms naked quite up to their shoulders.—You ask me what is squassation?"
Nobody had asked him, but he went on:
"It is thus performed: The prisoner hath his hands bound behind his back and weights tied to his feet, and then he is drawn up on high till his head reaches the very pulley. He is kept hanging in this manner for some time, that by the greatness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sudden he is let down with a jerk by slacking the rope, but kept from coming quite to the ground, by the which terrible shake his arms and legs are all disjointed, whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the shock which he receives by the sudden stop of the fall, and the weight at his feet, stretching his whole body more intently and cruelly."
Johnnie jumped up from the deck and stretched his arms. "What fiends be these!" he cried. "Is there no justice nor true legal process in Spain?"
"Holy Church! Holy Church, Señor!" the Don replied. "But sit you down again. Sith you are going to Seville, as I understand you to say, let me tell you what happened to a noble lady of that city, Joan Bohorquia, the wife of Francis Varquius, a very eminent man and lord of Highuera, and daughter of Peter Garcia Xeresius, a most wealthy citizen. All this I tell you of my personal knowledge, in that my brother was acquainted with it all and part of the machinery of the Holy Office. And this is a most sad and pitiful story, which, Señor Englishman, you would think a story of the doings of devils from hell! But no! 'Twas all done by the priests of Jesus our Lord; and so now to my story.
"Eight days after her delivery they took the child from her, and on the fifteenth shut her close up, and made her undergo the fate of the other prisoners, and began to manage her with their usual arts and rigour. In so dreadful a calamity she had only this comfort, that a certain pious young woman, who was afterwards burned for her religion by the Inquisitors, was allowed her for her companion.
"This young creature was, on a certain day, carried out to her torture, and being returned from it into her jail, she was so shaken, and had all her limbs so miserably disjointed, that when she laid upon her bed of rushes it rather increased her misery than gave her rest, so that she could not turn herself without most excessive pain.
"In this condition, as Bohorquia had it not in her power to show her any or but very little outward kindness, she endeavoured to comfort her mind with great tenderness.
"The girl had scarce begun to recover from her torture, when Bohorquia was carried out to the same exercise, and was tortured with such diabolical cruelty upon the rack, that the rope pierced and cut into the very bones in several places, and in this manner she was brought back to prison, just ready to expire, the blood immediately running out of her mouth in great plenty. Undoubtedly they had burst her bowels, insomuch that the eighth day after her torture she died.