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“‘When you are quite quiet–deathly quiet,’ said the Major, ‘you shall come out. Not before;’ and he shut the trap in its face very softly.

“‘Come, Johnson, march!’ he said, and took the lead, and we walked out of the prison.

“I was like to faint, but I dared not disobey, and the man’s screeching followed us all down the empty corridors and halls, until we shut the first great door on it.

“It may have gone on for hours, alone in that awful emptiness. The creature was a reptile, but the thought sickened my heart.

“And from that hour till his death, five months later, he rotted and maddened in his dreadful tomb.”

* * * * *

There was more, but I pushed the ghastly confession from me at this point in uncontrollable loathing and terror. Was it possible–possible, that injured vanity could so falsify its victim’s every tradition of decency?

“Oh!” I muttered, “what a disease is ambition! Who takes one step towards it puts his foot on Alsirat!”

It was minutes before my shocked nerves were equal to a resumption of the task; but at last I took it up again, with a groan.

* * * * *

“I don’t think at first I realized the full mischief the Governor intended to do. At least, I hoped he only meant to give the man a good fright and then let him go. I might have known better. How could he ever release him without ruining himself?

“The next morning he summoned me to attend him. There was a strange new look of triumph in his face, and in his hand he held a heavy hunting-crop. I pray to God he acted in madness, but my duty and obedience was to him.

“‘There is sport toward, Johnson,’ he said. ‘My dervish has got to dance.’

“I followed him quiet. We listened when I opened the jail door, but the place was silent as the grave. But from the cell, when we reached it, came a low, whispering sound.

“The Governor slipped the trap and looked through.

“‘All right,’ he said, and put the key in the door and flung it open.

“He were sittin’ crouched on the ground, and he looked up at us vacant-like. His face were all fallen down, as it were, and his mouth never ceased to shake and whisper.

“The Major shut the door and posted me in a corner. Then he moved to the creature with his whip.

“‘Up!’ he cried. ‘Up, you dervish, and dance to us!’ and he brought the thong with a smack across his shoulders.

“The creature leapt under the blow, and then to his feet with a cry, and the Major whipped him till he danced. All round the cell he drove him, lashing and cutting–and again, and many times again, until the poor thing rolled on the floor whimpering and sobbing. I shall have to give an account of this some day. I shall have to whip my master with a red-hot serpent round the blazing furnace of the pit, and I shall do it with agony, because here my love and my obedience was to him.

“When it was finished, he bade me put down food and drink that I had brought with me, and come away with him; and we went, leaving him rolling on the floor of the cell, and shut him alone in the empty prison until we should come again at the same time to-morrow.

“So day by day this went on, and the dancing three or four times a week, until at last the whip could be left behind, for the man would scream and begin to dance at the mere turning of the key in the lock. And he danced for four months, but not the fifth.