n the overhead track, made
it possible for the assistant to seize his tail and drag him through the
air till he was above the chair. His helpless body guided thus by the
tail, his chest jabbed by the iron fork in Mulcachy's hands, the rope was
suddenly lowered, and Ben Bolt, with swimming brain, found himself seated
in the chair. On the instant he leaped for the floor, received a blow on
the nose from the heavy whip-handle, and had a blank cartridge fired
straight into his nostril. His madness of pain and fear was multiplied.
He sprang away in flight, but Mulcachy's voice rang out, "Hoist him!" and
he slowly rose in the air again, hanging by his neck, and began to
strangle.

Once more he was swung into position by his tail, jabbed in the chest,
and lowered suddenly on the run--but so suddenly, with a frantic twist of
his body on his part, that he fell violently across the chair on his
belly. What little wind was left him from the strangling, seemed to have
been ruined out of him by the violence of the fall. The glare in his
eyes was maniacal and swimming. He panted frightfully, and his head
rolled back and forth. Slaver dripped from his mouth, blood ran from his
nose.

"Hoist away!" Mulcachy shouted.

And again, struggling frantically as the tightening collar shut off his
wind, Ben Bolt was slowly lifted into the air. So wildly did he struggle
that, ere his hind feet were off the floor, he pranced back and forth, so
that when he was heaved clear his body swung like a huge pendulum. Over
the chair, he was dropped, and for a fraction of a second the posture was
his of a man sitting in a chair. Then he uttered a terrible cry and
sprang.

It was neither snarl, nor growl, nor roar, that cry, but a sheer scream,
as if something had broken inside of him. He missed Mulcachy by inches,
as another blank cartridge exploded up his other nostril and as the men
with the rope snapped him back so abruptly as almost to break his neck.

This time, lowered quickly, he sank into the chair like a half-empty sack
of meal, and continued so to sink, until, crumpling at the middle, his
great tawny head falling forward, he lay on the floor unconscious. His
tongue, black and swollen, lolled out of his mouth. As buckets of water
were poured on him he groaned and moaned. And here ended the first
lesson.

"It's all right," Mulcachy said, day after day, as the teaching went on.
"Patience and hard work will pull off the trick. I'