To this a rope was attached; after this they were thrust over the cliff, and a piercing cry, which curdled the blood in our hearts, burst from each, when, by the violence of the jerk and their own weight, their arms were torn round and upward, and dislocated in the shoulder socket.
In this horrible situation they swung at the extremity of the suspending lines, which were made fast to the roots of a palm-tree; and there with a pendulous motion, they swayed to and fro in mid-air, over the sharp edge of that impending cliff, with the rocky bank of the Gabon four hundred feet below.
Need I say their shrieks and cries for pity were piercing and unheeded?
Unable to yield them the slightest assistance, we gazed in speechless horror; while, as their strength waned, their sad moans arose from time to time to the plateau on which we stood.
The hungry cormorants, in anticipation of their coming repast, came out of their holes in the cliff, and with flapping wings, wheeled and swooped up and down about them.
To protract the mental and bodily agony endured by these poor fellows, they were permitted to hang thus for nearly half an hour, when the King gave a signal, and a score of tum-tums, or drums, were beaten. On this, the cords were parted by three blows of a sharp hatchet, then the bodies of our companions fell whizzing through the air, and vanished from sight far down below, where no doubt the river crocodiles, the greedy cormorants, and the wild ducks would soon rend their poor corses asunder.
So perished these unfortunates!
We looked into each other's haggard eyes with blank dismay; and it may readily be supposed that such an episode made us still more spiritless and timid.
"Oh, my wife! my poor wife!" exclaimed the unfortunate Baylis from time to time. "Death is but the birthday of another life, the parsons tell us; but I think with horror of her fate among such cowardly dogs as these. God help her! God help her!"
A series of prolonged and exulting yells now announced that our captors conceived they had appeased the spirit of the fetisher whom the Yankees had slain.