The horses moved; the straightened ropes pulled Azya’s legs. In a twinkle his body was drawn along the earth and met the point of the stake. Then the point commenced to sink in him, and something dreadful began,—something repugnant to nature and the feelings of man. The bones of the unfortunate moved apart from one another; his body gave way in two directions; pain indescribable, so awful that it almost bounds on some monstrous delight, penetrated his being. The stake sank more and more deeply. Azya fixed his jaws, but he could not endure; his teeth were bared in a ghastly grin, and out of his throat came the cry, “A! a! a!” like the croaking of a raven.
“Slowly!” commanded the sergeant.
Azya repeated his terrible cry more and more quickly.
“Art croaking?” inquired the sergeant.
Then he called to the men,—
“Stop! together! There, it is done,” said he, turning to Azya, who had grown silent at once, and in whose throat only a deep rattling was heard.
The horses were taken out quickly; then men raised the stake, planted the large end of it in a hole prepared purposely, and packed earth around it. The son of Tugai Bey looked from above on that work. He was conscious. That hideous species of punishment is in this the more dreadful, that victims drawn on to the stake live sometimes three days. Azya’s head was hanging on his breast; his lips were moving, smacking, as if he were chewing something and tasting it. He felt then a great faintness, and saw before him, as it were, a boundless, whitish mist, which, it is unknown wherefore, seemed to him terrible; but in that mist he recognized the faces of the sergeant and the dragoons, he saw that he was on the stake, that the weight of his body was sinking him deeper and deeper. Then he began to grow numb from the feet, and began to be less and less sensitive to pain.
At times darkness hid from him that whitish mist; then he blinked with his one seeing eye, wishing to see and behold everything till death. His gaze passed with particular persistence from torch to torch, for it seemed to him that around each flame there was a rainbow circle.
But his torture was not ended; after a while the sergeant approached the stake with an auger in his hand, and cried to those standing near,—
“Lift me up.”