th or such a
matter before the cabin door.

He bore the torture patiently, as some poor dumb beast suffering at the
hand of man, and would not part his lips for all the captain's curses.
But this was only the merciful beginning. With yells of savage fury the
Indians carried brands to make a slow fire at his feet; and, lest that
should not be enough, a brace of them climbed to the roof, tore off the
splits for kindling, and set the cabin wall alight behind him.

You may thank God, my dears, that you are living in a kindlier age.
Mayhap the savage, now a-march toward the setting sun, is still as
pitiless as he was; but not in any corner of the world, I think, would
Anglo-Saxon men, wearing the king's or any other uniform, be witnesses
unmoved of such a devil's carnival of torment as this that made me
nauseate with horror.

As with the stretching of the cord the wretched black spun slowly round
and round before the growing blaze, his cries were something terrible to
hear. And when the fire light played upon his face it was a sight to
freeze the blood: the eyes shut tight against the shriveling heat, the
cracking lips drawn back, the black skin changing to a dry and sickly
brown. And ever and anon between the shrieks the parched lips shaped a
plea: "O Massa! Massa Cap'm! shoot po' nigga and let um die!"

This plea for cruel kindness cut me to the marrow of my bones; and
lacking means to save his life, I thought I might at least make shift to
try to put him out of misery.

The enemy's dispositions favored me. The savages, drunk with lust of
blood, leaped and danced around their victim. Falconnet sat his horse
apart beneath the maples, and with his bodyguard of troopers, was well
within the borderland of lurid shadow where the fire light mingled with
the night.

I crept away and made a swift detour to the right to come behind the
rearmost horseman of the troop. As his ill luck would have it, his
horse, affrighted at the firelit pandemonium, was in the act of wheeling
to run away. Being cumbered with a musket, the man made clumsy work of
handling his mount, and when the beast came down in a snorting tremble
to rear afresh at sight of me, the man flung away the musket and drew
his sword.

In cooler blood I might have given him his soldier's chance, but here
again it was another's life or mine. Even so, I might have fought him
fair, had he but held his tongue and fought in silence. But this he
would not, so I had to qui