le fit of hysterical
laughter (the precise effect which I afterwards ascertained Smellie was
anxious to produce); so highly exasperating the fetish-man that, with
eyes fairly sparkling with rage, he advanced and struck me a violent
blow on the mouth with his filthy hand, passing on immediately
afterwards to seek elsewhere for a victim.

He had not far to seek; the miserable wretch next me on my left was so
paralysed with fear that he was deemed a fit and proper person to become
the next sacrifice, and almost unresistingly--until resistance was all
too late--he was dragged forward into the inner circle, thrown flat upon
his stomach, and his hands and feet bound securely together behind him.
Then, indeed, he seemed suddenly to awake to a sense of his horrid fate;
and his superhuman struggles for freedom and his ear-splitting yells
were simply dreadful beyond all description to see and hear. The
fetish-man and his assistants, confident of the reliable character of
their work, stood back and looked on quietly at the miserable wretch's
unavailing struggles; they seemed to be regarded as quite a part of the
entertainment, and the unhappy creature was allowed to continue them
unmolested until they ceased from exhaustion. Then, when he lay quite
still, panting and breathless, with his eyes starting from their sockets
and the perspiration streaming from every pore, the fetish-man
approached him and deftly bending on to his fettered limbs an end of
stout monkey-rope, he was dragged along the ground into the fire, and
thence triced in an instant up to the shears, whence he hung suspended
at the height of about a foot immediately over the glowing embers.

The miserable sufferer bore the torment as long as he could, and I shall
never forget the awful sight his distorted features presented as,
drawing back his head as far as he could from the fierce heat, he glared
round the circle seeking perchance for a hand merciful enough to put him
out of his misery--but after the first minute of suffering his stoicism
abandoned him, and he writhed so violently that the fetish-man and his
assistants had to steady the shears in order to prevent them from
capsizing altogether. And with every writhe of the victim the slender
poles bent and gave, letting the miserable sufferer sink down some three
or four inches nearer the fire. The superhuman struggles, the frightful
contortions and writhings of the man, his ear-splitting yells, the
horrible s