took his foot from the bar. "When you've
had enough of this, send me word, and we'll have the branding-irons to
you."

On that he swung on his heel, and strode out of the stockade, his
negroes following.

Pitt had heard him, as we hear things in our dreams. At the moment so
spent was he by his cruel punishment, and so deep was the despair into
which he had fallen, that he no longer cared whether he lived or died.

Soon, however, from the partial stupor which pain had mercifully
induced, a new variety of pain aroused him. The stocks stood in the
open under the full glare of the tropical sun, and its blistering rays
streamed down upon that mangled, bleeding back until he felt as if
flames of fire were searing it. And, soon, to this was added a torment
still more unspeakable. Flies, the cruel flies of the Antilles, drawn by
the scent of blood, descended in a cloud upon him.

Small wonder that the ingenious Colonel Bishop, who so well understood
the art of loosening stubborn tongues, had not deemed it necessary to
have recourse to other means of torture. Not all his fiendish cruelty
could devise a torment more cruel, more unendurable than the torments
Nature would here procure a man in Pitt's condition.

The slave writhed in his stocks until he was in danger of breaking his
limbs, and writhing, screamed in agony.

Thus was he found by Peter Blood, who seemed to his troubled vision
to materialize suddenly before him. Mr. Blood carried a large palmetto
leaf. Having whisked away with this the flies that were devouring
Jeremy's back, he slung it by a strip of fibre from the lad's neck, so
that it protected him from further attacks as well as from the rays of
the sun. Next, sitting down beside him, he drew the sufferer's head down
on his own shoulder, and bathed his face from a pannikin of cold water.
Pitt shuddered and moaned on a long, indrawn breath.

"Drink!" he gasped. "Drink, for the love of Christ!" The pannikin was
held to his quivering lips. He drank greedily, noisily, nor ceased
until he had drained the vessel. Cooled and revived by the draught, he
attempted to sit up.

"My back!" he screamed.

There was an unusual glint in Mr. Blood's eyes; his lips were
compressed. But when he parted them to speak, his voice came cool and
steady.

"Be easy, now. One thing at a time. Your back's taking no harm at all
for the present, since I've covered it up. I'm wanting to know what's
happened to you. D' ye think we can