With Force and Arms: A Tale of Love and Salem Witchcraft

by Howard Roger Garis

When I had come to myself I was back again in gaol with those I had left, when I went forth, as they thought to death. Some news of how I had broken the press came in with me, and there was much wonder.

As for myself I was, for a while, as helpless as a new born babe, because my strength had all gone from me. It was days before I recovered, and never since have I been able to lift as heavy weights as before that supreme test.

I began to think a little of the plight I was in now. I had supposed, when they saw that I was able to break the machine with which they hoped to torture me to death, they would release me. But I had reckoned little with whom I had to deal. Sir George was not yet satisfied. Now I might expect to again go up to death, this time with little chance to escape.

I talked with some of the prisoners on the matter, and they said there were points of law which might be used in my behalf. The death sentence, which was not completed, could no longer hold good, it was said, so that, shortly, I would go forth a free man. For I had gone through the manner of death prescribed, and had lived. Now it was written, so I was told, that a man might not be put in jeopardy of his life twice by the law.

I was bitter in heart, those days, I called myself many times a fool, when I thought how I might have killed Sir George, when I had the chance, and, by this time, be far away with Lucille. If I had known that I could trust her. But the feeling that she would cast me aside, as she seemed to have done in the case of her husband, halted me. I was torn between many impulses.

The witch trials went on, for the accusations multiplied. At length Salem gaol held no less than four-score men and women, who had either been found guilty of witchcraft or who waited to be tried on the foul charges. Besides those in prison, there were double that number under suspicion. Not only in Salem, but in Andover, Gloucester, Ipswich and the neighboring towns. The infection had spread until the whole country was like a vast pesthouse, and the land was red with the blood of the slain.

Nineteen had been hanged in Salem, and two were burned at the stake. One man, swung from the gallows, was an aged clergyman. One day my former lieutenant, Giles Cory, was arrested as a witch, and cast into gaol with me. Only a few days before his aged mother had been hanged, and he was in sore distress. We two condoled with each other, until one morning, when I missed him.

“Where is Cory?” I asked the guard.

“Dead,” was the brief reply.

I learned that he had been crushed to death in the same machine that I had broken. The witch-finders had repaired it, making it very stout, for rumors had got about of Cory’s strength. Remembering my bursting of the ropes they bound the hapless man so that it would have taken a score of men, as strong as I, to have broken the bonds. In that manner my lieutenant met his death. Not that he did not struggle, beneath the cruel press. A guard, who watched him die, said Cory tore loose one muscle from his arm, as the planks came down.