the suggestions thrown out by some
of those fiends that I confess a qualm of fear surged over me for a
second or two; for I saw at once that, unlike my captors, these ruffians
were not endeavouring merely to frighten me, but were in deadly earnest.
Not that I feared death; no man who ever knew me could dub me coward.
In the heat of battle, or under most ordinary circumstances I can face
death--ay, and have faced it a hundred times--without a tremor; but to
be triced up, helpless, and to have one's strength sapped and one's life
slowly drained away by a long drawn-out succession of unspeakable
torments is a prospect that I venture to say few can bring themselves to
face without some manifestation of discomposure. Although my cheeks and
lips may have blanched for a moment, I permitted no further and greater
sign of fear to escape me. I returned their glances of fiendish
ferocity with an unquailing eye, and listened to their diabolical jests
in apparently unruffled silence, as I was conducted through their ranks
by my captors toward a small hillock, overshadowed by a gigantic _bois
immortelle_, upon which sat a negro in solitary state, appeasing his
hunger by wolfishly tearing, with his strong white teeth, the flesh from
three or four roast ribs of goat which he grasped with both hands.

I do not think I ever encountered a lower, or more bestial type of
humanity than was this man. He was a pure-blooded black, of almost
herculean proportions, and evidently of enormous strength, as are many
of the pure-blooded West African negroes; but one completely lost sight
of his splendid physique in contemplation of the expression of low
cunning and ferocious cruelty that blazed out of his small, narrow eyes
and contorted his wide, flat nostrils, his thick, blubber lips, and his
unnaturally prominent chin and jaws; he was the very embodiment and
picture of all the most savage and debasing passions that characterise
the worst specimens of humanity, and reminded me of nothing so much as a
combination of snake, tiger, and monkey clothed in the outward semblance
of a human form. "Heaven have mercy upon the unfortunate who stirs this
brute to anger!" thought I. He was undoubtedly well aware of the
feelings of horror and repulsion that he inspired in the breasts of
others, and seemed rather to pride himself upon it, I thought; for as I
was led forward into his presence he paused in his wolfish feeding and
glared upon me with an expressio