to the searing of
his hands and ankles, while the weight of his body dragged his neck more
tightly than otherwise would have been the case, against the upper rope.
His face presented a terrifying sight, being quite blue, from his
inability to breathe, except with the greatest difficulty. His mouth was
wide open and his tongue, which protruded, was exceedingly swollen. His
eyes were half out of their sockets. But he had to serve the sentence of
four hours, and although he became unconscious time after time and had
to be released, water always brought him to his senses to undergo a
further spell upon the fiendish rack until the sentence had been well
and truly served.

On one occasion a poor wretch condemned to this torture, after having
become unconscious, was taken down, revived, and incarcerated for the
night in the guard-room. The next morning he was marched out again and
re-tied up to complete his sentence.

Major Bach, as if suddenly inspired, conceived a fiendish means of
accentuating the agony of a prisoner condemned to this punishment. The
man would be tied to the post about the middle of the morning. The
summer sun beat fiercely upon the post and the man's hat was removed.
Consequently, as the poor wretch's head dropped forward on his chest,
its crown became exposed to the fierce heat of the sun. Thus to the pain
of the torture inflicted by the tightly tied ropes, and the strangling
sensation produced by the throat pressing against the restraining rope,
was added the racking torment of intolerable heat playing upon a
sensitive part of the human body. The astonishing wonder is that none of
the unhappy wretches suffered sun-stroke or went crazy while bound up in
this manner, because the sun's heat intensely aggravated the agonies of
thirst. But the sun-bath consummated Major Bach's greatest ambition. It
caused the victim to writhe and twist more frantically, which in turn
forced him to shriek and howl more vociferously and continuously.

When a prisoner was in the height of his torment the eminent Commandant
would stroll up, and from a couple of paces away would stand, legs wide
apart and hands clasped behind his back, surveying the results of his
devilry with the greatest self-satisfaction. As the prisoner groaned and
moaned he would fling coarse joke, badinage, and gibe at the helpless
wretch, and when the latter struggled and writhed in order to seek some
relief, though in vain, he would laugh uproariously,