Chapter Thirty Seven.
A Tough Amputation.
During three days succeeding the tragical event recorded, there was tranquillity in the bandit quarters—that gloomy quiet that succeeds some terrible occurrence, alike telling that it has occurred.
So far as Henry Harding saw, the chief kept himself indoors—as if doing decent penance for the brutal crime he had committed.
On the fourth day there transpired an event which roused the rendezvous to its usual activity. There was an excitement among the men, under which the late sanguinary scene was likely to be buried in oblivion.
A little before sunrise, the signals of the sentinel announced the approach of a messenger; and shortly afterwards a man came into the quarters. He was in peasant garb—the same who had carried the requisition on the landlord of the lodgings, and brought back the three-score scudi. This time he was the bearer of a dispatch of somewhat portentous appearance—a large envelope, enclosing a letter, with still another inside. It was addressed to the brigand chief, and to him delivered direct. The captive knew of the arrival of the messenger by much excited talking outside, which also proclaimed it to be an event of importance. He only learned that there was a letter, when the brigand chief burst angrily into his cell, holding the opened epistle in his hand.
“So!” cried the latter in fierce vociferation. “So, Signor Inglese, you’ve quarrelled with your father, have you? Well, that won’t help you. It only shows, that for being such an undutiful son you deserve a little punishment. If you’d been a better boy, your worthy parent might have acted differently, and saved you your ears. As it is, you are about to lose them. Console yourself with the thought that they are not going out of the family. They shall be cropped off with the greatest care, and sent under cover to your father. Bring him out, comrades! Let us have light for this delicate amputation.”
Doggy Dick was ordered by the chief to go into the house for a knife; while two others retained the captive in their grasp, holding him as if to keep him steady for an operation. A third knocked his hat from his head, while a fourth pulled his long brown curls up over his crown, leaving his ears naked for the knife. All seemed to take delight in what they were doing, the women as well as the men—more especially she who had been instrumental in causing the death of Popetta. There was anger in the eyes of all; they were spited at not receiving the riscatta. The renegade had told an exaggerated story of the wealth of the captive’s father, and they had founded high hopes upon it. They charged their disappointment to the prisoner, and were paying him for it by gibes and rough usage. They could see his ears cut off without a single sentiment of pity or remorse.
In a few seconds the knife-blade was gleaming against his cheek. It was raised to the left ear, which in another instant would have been severed from his head, when the captive, by a superhuman wrench, released his left hand, and instinctively applied it over the spot. It was a mere convulsive effort, caused by the horror of his situation. It would have been utterly unavailing, and he knew it. He had only made the movement under the impulse of a physical instinct. And yet it had the effect of preserving the threatened member.