"He is to endure the most dreadful tortures."
"How?"
"By iron hooks, inserted under his shoulder-blades, he will be suspended alive over a slow fire, and his lower joints will be cut off one by one, with the sharp knives of the gangas, beginning with the toes, and so proceeding upward to the knees and hip-joints; but few live, with the fire playing about them, until the knives come that length."
"When will the moon be over La Souffrière?" said I, starting up at the risk of discovery.
"In another hour," replied the young quadroon, consulting his watch.
"Then we have just time to bring up my men, and make a dash at the palisades," I replied in a loud whisper, as we crawled backward, until we reached the narrow path which led us down the rocks, and from thence I hastened back to the ravine in which we had concealed my company.
CHAPTER LXII.
SCIPIO.
"Our orders are, that we take no prisoners, but strike terror by the fury of our attack and the severity of our treatment," said I, as the company re-entered the pass; for human life had now become such a cheap commodity, that if we set little value on our own existence, we put none whatever on that of others—of the insurgent negroes, especially.
Dividing the company in two, as we drew near the camp. I heard once more the wild clamour of its occupants, and saw the wavering gleams of their watchfire falling on rock and tree. With one subdivision of forty men I marched to assail the palisade in front, while my lieutenant—an officer who afterwards commanded a battalion of the 60th under the Duke of Wellington, with the remainder, led by the quadroon guide, made a dètour to the left, and ascended by the secret path already mentioned.