andles, collop fashion, or squeezing heads flat in a
vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were upon earth,
compared with one of these? Mere pastime! Here were a hundred thousand
shoutings, hoarse sighs, and strong groans; yonder a boisterous wailing
and horrible outcry answering them, and the howling of a dog is sweet,
delicious music, when compared with these sounds. When we had proceeded
a little way onward from the accursed beach, towards the wild place of
Damnation, I perceived, by their own light, innumerable men and women
here and there; and devils without number and without rest, incessantly
employing their strength in tormenting. Yes, there they were, devils and
damned, the devils roaring with their own torments, and making the damned
roar, by means of the torments which they inflicted upon them. I paid
particular observation to the corner which was nearest me. There I
beheld the devils with pitch-forks, tossing the damned up into the air,
that they might fall headlong on poisoned hatchels or barbed pikes, there
to wriggle their bowels out. After a time the wretches would crawl in
multitudes, one upon another, to the top of one of the burning crags,
there to be broiled like mutton; from there they would be snatched afar,
to the top of one of the mountains of eternal frost and snow, where they
would be allowed to shiver for a time; thence they would be precipitated
into a loathsome pool of boiling brimstone, to wallow there in
conflagration, smoke, and the suffocation of horrible stench; from the
pool they would be driven to the marsh of Hell that they might embrace
and be embraced by its reptiles many times worse than serpents and
vipers; after allowing them half an hour's dalliance with these
creatures, the devils would seize a bundle of rods of steel, fiery hot
from the furnace, and would scourge them till their howlings, caused by
the horrible inexpressible pain which they endured, would fill the vast
abode of darkness, and when the fiends deemed that they had scourged them
enough, they would take hot irons and sear their bloody wounds.

There was here no fainting, nor swooning to evade a moment of suffering,
but a continual strength to suffer and to feel, though you would have
imagined after one horrible cry, that it would be utterly impossible
there should be strength remaining to give another cry so frightfully
loud; the damned never lowered their key, and the devils kept replying,
"beh