said the Superior, grinding her teeth, “only I should lose too much, she is worth more alive than dead.”
A couple of lady’s riding whips were now produced, and the two women attacked me afresh; I was cut all over my body, each cut seemed as if done with a red hot knife, the blood flowed down my back in streams, and yet their rage seemed to increase at the sight of my sufferings. My screams were awful, but only so much music to their ears. They jeered and derided my cries for “God to have mercy on me, &c.,” said “my time was come to die, but they would make me last as long as possible, and draw out my agony to the very last gasp.”
[44]
]This must all have passed in a very short time, but was an age of intense suffering to me, and the finale was such a display of ferocity that I sank under it, and thus robbed them of the pleasure of prolonging my torture. The Superior seized me by the hair, and drawing my head back, lashed her whip across my face and bosom, drawing more blood at every cut, whilst old Serena, not to be outdone, took my right leg under her arm, cut me dreadfully
inside my thighs, along the crack of my pussey, and made the tip of her whip
reach the Mons
Veneris.
This was the last I could recollect, but when I came to myself I was in my own bed, wrapped up in cloths soaked in water. No bones were broken, and my health soon recovered sufficiently to enable me to effect my escape, and avoid their further malice.