waist, and triced me up by the wrists to the foremast.

"Ready!" called the officer. "One!"

Down came the lash upon my bare back. But the sting of its thongs was as
nothing to the sting of shame which pierced my heart. Death would have
been far less bitter than this disgrace!

The count went on. Stroke after stroke slashed across my back and
shoulders as heavily as my imbruted executioner could strike. Soon the
blood began to ooze, then trickle, then stream down. By the fiftieth
stroke I should judge that my back was a mass of raw flesh. Yet the
count continued, the strokes fell without ceasing, mercilessly.

Coming as I did from a people bred to endure the utmost torture of the
Indian savage, I found no difficulty in restraining any outcry under
this equally fiendish torture of so-called Christians. But as the little
surgeon had said, no man can foresee the limits of endurance. At the
seventy-third stroke I swooned. They did not cut me down, but let me
hang by the wrists, and drenched me with buckets of sea-water, until I
revived.

I gasped, stiffened, and writhed in the hell of agony which beset me
with returning consciousness.

"Seventy-four!" called the officer.

The lash descended, all the more forcefully for the rest enjoyed by the
wielder.

"Seventy-five!--seventy-six!--seventy-seven!" went on the merciless
tally.

I gritted my teeth, and vowed to endure and live, that I might overturn
heaven and earth to accomplish the shame and destruction of Britain. My
glaring eyes looked out past the mast upon the sailors before me with
such murderous rage that one by one they edged back and around beyond
reach of my vision.

The count had now passed the eighties--it was at ninety. Only ten more
strokes! But despite my rage, a deathly sickness was fast creeping upon
me. I could no longer hold up my head. Try as I might, it sank lower and
lower, until my chin was upon my quivering breast.

"Ninety-five!" The words came faint, from an immeasurable distance. I
was again about to swoon.

Suddenly I heard a cry of anguish such as I trust never to hear again.
It was the voice of my lady! I looked up. She was darting toward me, her
beautiful hair flying wildly in the breeze, the rosary in her
outstretched hand.

"Ninety-six!" Again the lash fell.

"Ninety-seven!" But now she was beside me--she had flung herself between
me and the descending lash. I heard the sailors cry out. The executioner
whisked his lash asid