e, and if you don't tell the truth I will take means to
force it out of you."

Saying this he turned to the brazier and pulled out the iron poker to
see that it was becoming red-hot. The countenance of the negro became
very grave as he observed this, and the midshipman's heart sank within
him.

"So you deliberately tell me," said the Moor abruptly, as he wheeled
round and confronted Peter the Great, "that you have no knowledge as to
where, or with whom, this girl is?"

"No, massa," answered the negro, with solemn sincerity. "If you was to
skin me alive I not able to tell you whar she is or who she is wid."

Peter said no more than this aloud, but he added, internally, that he
would sooner die than give any further information, even if he had it to
give.

Osman made a motion with his hand as a signal to the four seamen, who,
advancing quickly, seized the negro, and held him fast. One of the men
then stripped off the poor man's shirt. At the same moment Osman drew
the red-hot iron from the fire, and deliberately laid it on Peter's
back, the skin of which hissed and almost caught fire, while a cloud of
smoke arose from it.

The hapless victim did not struggle. He was well aware that resistance
would be useless. He merely clenched his teeth and hands. But when
Osman removed the iron and applied it to another part of his broad back
a deep groan of agony burst from the poor fellow, and beads of
perspiration rolled from his brow.

At first George Foster could scarcely believe his eyes. He was almost
paralysed by an intense feeling of horror. Then there came a tremendous
rebound. Rage, astonishment, indignation, fury, and a host of cognate
passions, met and exploded in his bosom. Uttering a yell that
harmonised therewith, he sprang forward, hit Osman a straight English
left-hander between the eyes, and followed it up with a right-hander in
the gullet, which sent the cruel monster flat on the floor, and his head
saluted the bricks with an effective bump. In his fall the Moor
overturned the brazier, and brought the glowing fire upon his bosom,
which it set alight--his garments being made of cotton.

To leap up with a roar of pain and shake off the glowing cinders was the
work of a moment. In the same moment two of the stout seamen threw
themselves on the roused midshipman, and overcame him--not, however,
before one of them had received a black eye and the other a bloody nose,
for Moors do not understand the