string them all up, so that they can be seen from everywhere and
nobody will dare attack us. Kill them comrades! And M. Dubosc to begin
with! Who'll attend to M. Dubosc? I haven't the energy myself."

The comrades rushed forward. One of them, more agile than the rest,
seized Simon by the throat, jammed his head against the broken mast
and, pressing the barrel of his revolver against his temple, fired
four times.

"Well done!" cried Rolleston! "Well done!"

"Well done!" cried the others, stamping with rage around the
executioner.

The man had covered Simon's head with a strip of cloth already spotted
with blood, which he knotted round the mast, so that its ends, brought
level with the forehead and turned upwards, looked like a donkey's
ear, which provoked an explosion of merriment.

Simon did not feel the least surprise on discovering that he was
still alive, that he had not even been wounded by those four shots
fired point-blank. This was the way of the incredible nightmare, a
succession of illogical acts and disconnected events which he could
neither foresee nor understand. In the very article of death, he was
saved by circumstances as absurd as those which had led him to death's
threshold. An unloaded weapon, an impulse of pity in his executioners:
no explanation gave a satisfactory reply.

In any case, he did not make a movement which might attract attention
and he remained like a corpse within the bonds which held him fixed in
a perpendicular position and behind the veil which hid his face, the
face of a living man.

The hideous tribunal resumed its functions and hurried over its
verdicts, while washing them down with copious libations. As each
victim was condemned, a glass of spirits was served, the tossing off
of which was meant to synchronize with a death-struggle. Foul jests,
blasphemies, laughter, songs, all mingled in an abominable din which
was dominated by Rolleston's piercing voice:

"Now have them hanged. Tell them to string up the corpses! Fire away,
comrades! I want to see them dancing at the end of their ropes when I
come back from my wife. The queen awaits me! Here's her health,
comrades!"

They touched glasses noisily, singing until they had escorted him to
the ladder; then they returned and immediately set to work upon the
loathsome business which Rolleston had judged necessary to terrorize
the distant crowd of marauders. Their jeers and exclamations enabled
Simon to follow the sickening