Ominous indeed were all the faces around us now. For the denunciation was terrible; if true, it could mean nothing but death for Roderick St. Amande. And that an awful death. Near the circle there stood a Cross which we who dwelt in the colonies knew well the meaning and use of. That holy symbol, so out of place amongst a band of savages, was not reared here with reverence, but because, being the token of the white man's faith, the token to which he bowed his knee and poured out his soul, their devilish minds had devised it as the instrument of his execution. And white men, we knew from all hearsay and gossip of those who had escaped, had often suffered on the cross; there was not an encampment of Shawnee Indians, of Manahoacs, of Powhattans, Nanticokes, or Doegs--all of which tribes surrounded Virginia--in which there was not one erected for their torture and execution. Only, in those executions their tortures and their sufferings were greater far than any which had ever been devised outside the colonies. Those whose fate led them to these Crosses suffered not only crucifixion, but worse, far worse. As they hung upon them, their poor hands and feet nailed to the beams, while their bare bodies were tortured by all the insects that abound in the region, they served also as marks for the arrows and, sometimes, the bullets of their savage foes. Happy indeed, were those to whom a vital wound was dealt early in their suffering, happy those who died at once and did not linger on, perhaps from one day to the other, expiring slowly amidst the jeers of those amongst whom they had fallen.
Such was one form of revenge practised by the Indian on the white man, and, alas! there were many others. There was death by fire and death by burying alive, the body being in the earth, the head outside, a prey for the vultures to swoop down upon and to tear to pieces, beginning with the eyes; there was the death of thirst, when the victim sat gasping in the hot sun while all around him, but beyond his reach, were placed gourds of cool water.
It was to such deaths as these that we had feared our men might come if they fell into the hands of the enemy--the women, be it said, were never subjected to such torture, there were _other_ things reserved for them--it was one of such deaths as these that Roderick St. Amande might now fear if the band believed the denunciation of Anuza.