My appearance, in the character of a prisoner, was the signal for a great yell of ferocious delight on the part of the outlaws, immediately followed by a brisk fusillade of scurrilous, ribald jests concerning the sport that they would have with me upon their return to their mountain stronghold; and so bloodcurdling were the suggestions thrown out by some of those fiends that I confess a qualm of fear surged over me for a second or two; for I saw at once that, unlike my captors, these ruffians were not endeavouring merely to frighten me, but were in deadly earnest. Not that I feared death; no man who ever knew me could dub me coward. In the heat of battle, or under most ordinary circumstances I can face death--ay, and have faced it a hundred times--without a tremor; but to be triced up, helpless, and to have one's strength sapped and one's life slowly drained away by a long drawn-out succession of unspeakable torments is a prospect that I venture to say few can bring themselves to face without some manifestation of discomposure.  Although my cheeks and lips may have blanched for a moment, I permitted no further and greater sign of fear to escape me.  I returned their glances of fiendish ferocity with an unquailing eye, and listened to their diabolical jests in apparently unruffled silence, as I was conducted through their ranks by my captors toward a small hillock, overshadowed by a gigantic _bois immortelle_, upon which sat a negro in solitary state, appeasing his hunger by wolfishly tearing, with his strong white teeth, the flesh from three or four roast ribs of goat which he grasped with both hands.