Meanwhile many thoughts filled my mind. If I was not to be hanged, perhaps the awful torture of being burned at the stake awaited me. If so, I must make new plans, and act quickly.
All the while the Sheriff was reading from the parchment. He stumbled over the law terms, and the Latin vexed him sorely. Then he came to the decree that I must die “peine forte et dure,” and, as I had small stock of Latin, I wondered what I was to meet with.
At length there was an end to the reading. The guards advanced. I saw, among them, several who had served under me, yet never a one gave me a glance that was not tempered with fear or distrust. Some of them began to pull the rope tight about my arms, and this act quickened me to take some steps for escape.
So I pretended that the cords cut into my flesh, and my sudden start, as if in pain, caused them to cease their efforts, leaving me a little room to move my muscles, which was what I wanted. When I had the chance I strained at the ropes, and I felt them stretch a trifle. I knew then, that the matter of bursting my bonds was a thing somewhat within my power.
But that was the smallest part of the problem. I was a long way from freedom yet.
On that morning it seemed as if the sun had never shone so brightly, nor had the sky been so blue, nor the birds so sweetly tuneful. I do not know why I noticed such things, for it was not usual to me. Perhaps the shadow of death made the brightness of life seem greater.
They started off at a brisk pace, with me in the centre of the throng, and one man holding the ropes that passed about my arms. As we reached the foot of Witch Hill I looked up the slope, expecting to see the grim gallows crowning the summit. Then I recalled the Sheriff’s words that none was to be provided. A murmur swelled upward from the crowd, and the people pushed this way and that, trying to get a view of me, as I have seen country boys do at a London fair.
We came, at last, to the place set for the execution. The crowd parted, and moved back, at the orders of the Sheriff, forming a living circle. Then, for the first time, I saw the machine of death.
For a time I could not fathom its nature. It was of wood, the uprights and cross pieces being of heavy oaken beams. There were four posts, or uprights, and, on these appeared to slide, like the wooden covering on the hay ricks in the fields, a flat bed of hewn boards, as large, perhaps, as the top of the table at the inn. Out of this bed extended a long pole, threaded round and round with a screw thread. This screw passed through one of the cross pieces above. A long handle, extending either way through the spiral post, out beyond the machine, completed the instrument.
Like a flash in the pan, the truth came upon me.