"Here Katina's beauty attracted the desires of the governor, Feodor Orloff; and, sending for her he offered to restore her family to liberty, upon what conditions you can guess, when I tell you that Katina's reply was a fierce blow from her open palm.
"The morrow happened to be the emperor's birthday, and Orloff with fiendish malice aforethought had the Polish exiles paraded before him, told them that they would be free from work that day, and in return for this boon required that they should cry 'God save the Czar,' Some refused, and among them the spirited Katina. Here was Orloff's opportunity. For disloyalty to the emperor, Katina was condemned to receive fifteen strokes of the knout.
"Have you ever seen a knouting? No? Well, I trust you never will, for it is not a pleasant sight, even though your nerves be of iron. I have been compelled to witness many such scourgings in Siberia, and I tell you that though Dante in his 'Inferno' has imagined many and various tortures for the damned, none of them are equal to the agony that an expert executioner can elicit with a few strokes of the knout.
"You must know that the victim, his wrist and ankles clasped by iron rings, is fixed to a sort of framework set erect in the ground—fixed in such a manner that he can make no movement, literally stretched as an eel's skin is stretched to dry.
"About twenty paces off stands the executioner, with sleeves tucked up, for nothing must embarrass the freedom of his movements. He holds in both hands the instrument of punishment—the knout. This is a thong of thick leather, cut triangularly, an inch in breadth, from nine to twelve feet long, and tapering to a point; this tapering end is fixed to a little wooden shaft about two feet in length.
"At the given signal the executioner advances, his body bent, and dragging the long lash between his legs. When he has arrived within three or four paces of his victim, he suddenly raises the knout above his head: the thong flies into the air, whistles, descends and clasps the naked torso of the sufferer as with a circle of iron. Notwithstanding his state of tension the victim bounds as if under a powerful shock of galvanism, at the same time uttering a shriek that, once heard, can never be forgotten. My God! Even now I often start from sleep with such a cry ringing in my ears.
"In drawing back the lash again the executioner has a way of pulling it along the edges of the opened flesh in such a manner as to widen and deepen the wound it has made.
"He retraces his steps and begins again the same manœuvre as many times as the victim is condemned to suffer blows. When the thong envelops the body with its folds the flesh and the muscles are literally cut into segments, as with a razor. The victim, crimson with blood, foams at the mouth and writhes in fearful agonies.
"And so our pretty Katina, nude to the waist—but enough; you have imagination, you can picture the scene."
Katina herself with saddened air had now drawn near again, in her dark eyes a fire that spoke of a desire for vengeance.