"Now force this traitor's head between his knees. Double up his legs, and tie him into a ball. The Archbishop must not complain that we deliver goods slovenly."
Steinmetz screamed aloud, and cried that such punishment was inhuman; even the guard hesitated, but an oath from the Black Count and a fierce glare flung about him, put springs into their bodies, and they fell on their late captain, smothering his cries, jamming down his head as they had been directed to do, finally tying him into a bundle that looked like nothing human. The wails of the doomed man in this constrained position would have cried mercy to any less savage than the Count.
"Place him on the catapult."
Two men picked him up and flung him into the jaws of the waiting monster with as little ceremony as if he were a sack of corn.
"Pull the rope, fellow."
Conrad stood motionless, gazing with horror at the furious Count.
"Stop, stop," cried Rodolph. "I protest against this cruelty. It is never your intention to launch him into eternity in such ghastly fashion. This is fiendish torture, not justice."
The Count, with the snarl of a wild beast, sprang forward, seized the rope from Conrad's nerveless fingers, jerked the mechanism loose before any could move to prevent him, and the great beams shot out like the arms of a man swimming. The human bundle was hurled forth into space, giving vent to a long continued shriek, that struck terror into every heart but that of the man who stood with the rope in his hand, his exultant face turned triumphantly upward in the moonlight. The shriek, continually lessening, rose and fell as the victim's head revolved round and round in its course through the air.
The human projectile disappeared long before it reached the earth, and every one stood motionless awaiting the crash which they thought would come to them in the still night air across the valley, but the Count sprang forward, and standing at the parapet, shook his clenched fist toward the sky, filling the valley with a madman's laughter which came echoing back to them from the opposite cliffs, as if there were in the hills a cave full of malignant maniacs.