“You say,” said she, “that the criminal is sometimes punished. Describe the process of capital execution.”
“It varies,” responded the stranger, “in the different sections of my country. In some places the condemned is strangled: in others he is imprisoned ‘for life,’ but usually pardoned after a few years. In the State where I last dwelt they have introduced the fashion of electrocution; that is to say, of killing the victim by electricity.”
“And how is that done?” queried Kayenna, always interested in anything savoring of novelty.
“I fear I cannot explain it clearly without the aid of a Brush generator or a dynamo of some kind, and I do not see anything of the sort hereabout. But your Highness no doubt has often seen the effects of a thunder-storm whereby somebody was slain, in the twinkling of an eye as it were. It is thus that we destroy such of our criminals as outlive the Process of Lor.”
“What doth the knave mean?” asked Kayenna, with a frown, aside to Shacabac.
“It passeth my comprehension,” was the reply, “but I fear me the dog laugheth at our faces; for how can any man call down lightning from heaven to destroy his enemies?” Then, addressing the stranger, he asked sternly: “Hath this divinity of thine—this not very infallible Lor—command of the forces of nature, so that it can at will draw down the thunderbolt wherewith to smite its victims? Thy tale is wondrous strange. Her Highness would fain see a proof of it. Take out the culprit, guilty of high treason but yesterday, and let him be ‘electrocuted,’ as thou callest it, before our eyes. Say I not right?” he added, turning toward Kayenna.
“Thou sayest but what is right and just,” was the prompt response; “and I confess that I am interested in seeing the operation of this invention so strangely chanced upon by ignorant unbelievers. Go on, stranger. The victim is ready. Let us see thee electrocute him forthwith.”
But, as obedience to that command was wholly beyond the stranger and as he could not give a satisfactory or intelligible explanation of his inability to obey, Kayenna became exceedingly wroth; and, being moreover a good deal tired of his long and tedious disquisition on Lor, she settled the matter summarily by saying: “This stranger is an impostor who hath doubtless fled from the rude justice of his own country. Let him be cast, along with the traitor, into the cave of the two-headed Snake; and thus let there be an end to all knaves and liars!”
This sentence being communicated to the American, he fell at the feet of Kayenna, and begged as a dying request that his picture might be taken before execution. On being asked why he desired that such a crime against the law of Moses as well as of Mohammed should be perpetrated, he only answered, in a somewhat incoherent fashion, “so that it might appear in the papers.”