r refinements of torture; all that
diabolical scoundrel's fiendish ingenuity will now be exercised to
devise for his victims increasingly atrocious and protracted agonies.
There is one, and only one hope for us, which is that by a persistent
refusal to be terrorised by him, and a judiciously scornful demeanour,
we may at last exasperate him out of his self-control, and thus provoke
him into inflicting upon us the _coup-de-grace_ at once and without any
of the preliminary torments. Here he comes again. Now, for your own
sake, dear lad, remember and act upon my advice."

The first act of the wretch was to despatch his four assistants into the
forest, whence they returned in a short time with three long slender
poles and a considerable quantity of creeper or monkey-rope. With
these, under the fetish-man's superintendence, a very tolerable set of
light shears was speedily constructed, which, when finished, was erected
immediately over the fire--now an immense mass of glowing smokeless
cinders--in front of the idol. The entire arrangement was so
unmistakably suggestive that I could not restrain a violent shudder as
it occurred to me that it might possibly be my fate to be subjected to
the fiery torment.

All being ready, a dead silence once more fell upon the assembly, and
the chief actor in the inhuman ceremonial once more looked keenly around
him for a victim.

As in the first instance, so now again was the wand pointed at Smellie's
breast, and once more the cruel crafty bearer of it advanced on tip-toe
with a stealthy cat-like tread toward us. He approached thus until he
had reached to within about ten feet of the tree, when he once more
paused in front of us, gesticulating with the wand and making as though
about to strike with it the light blow which seemed to be the stroke of
doom, keenly watching all the while for some sign of trepidation on the
part of his victim. Then, whilst the wretch was in the very midst of
his fantastic genuflexions before us, Smellie turned to me with a smile
and observed:

"Just picture to yourself, Hawkesley, the way in which that fellow would
be made to jump if Tom Collins, the boatswain's mate, could only
approach him from behind now, and freshen his way with just one touch of
his `cat.'"

There was perhaps not much in it; but the picture thus suggested to my
abnormally excited imagination seemed so supremely ridiculous that I
incontinently burst into a violent and uncontrollab