Jules Bardue groaned aloud at this announcement of his doom, and he saw the Snake Queen’s Indians snap the steel ramrod belonging to Big Moccasin’s musket, and approach him, griping the improvised nails and their tomahawks.
They were going to nail him to the soft rocks!
Then he knew the knife would be resorted to, and he would be flayed alive!
At the thought of such a terrible doom, his limbs quaked like aspen leaves, and that cowardice which always nestled in his heart now rose up and bubbled from his throat.
“Mercy! mercy! Coleola,” he cried, his face as white as ashes. “Spare! and I will leave this country, never, never to return. Woman!—”
“Nail the white dog to the stones!” was the unpitying command that rudely interrupted the creole’s pleadings. “To the hound’s cries Coleola is deaf; she couldn’t hear him were he to cry as loud as the great cataract far toward the big ice-seas.” [2]
The renegade bit his lips till the blood trickled over his chin, and in silence he permitted the warriors to push him against the rock.
He shrieked like a dying fiend when the first stroke of the tomahawk drove the pointless nail into his palm, and each succeeding blow was followed by a like shriek, until Coleola sprung forward and choked him into silence.
Under the Snake Queen’s gripe, and the pain occasioned by the nails, Jules Bardue lost his senses, and when he hung from the wall by both hands, Coleola stepped back and awaited the return of consciousness.
“The creole’s doom is terrible, but just!” murmured young Somerville, who had witnessed the red-men’s work in horrified silence, not knowing how soon he would be subjected to the same fearful torture. “I am doomed to some fearful death, but I can die more like a man than that dog gives promise of doing. For myself I care not, but for Kate yonder, I care much—all. I wonder where Doc is? Oh, if he knew that we were in the hands of that mad snake-woman, he’d hasten hither and with his own strong arm tear us from her. Freedom! freedom! Oh, were ye mine for one moment!”