Work and Days

     Then I was lifted up and carried to a flat space beside the stream, where the trunk of a youngpinehad been set upright in the ground. A man, waving a knife, and singing a wildsong, danced towards me. He seized me by the hair, and I actually rejoiced, for I knew that the pain of scalping would make me oblivious of all else. But he only drew the sharp point of the knife in acircle round my head, scarce breaking the skin. 


     I had grace given me to keep a stout face, mainly because I was relieved that thiswas to be my fate. He put the knife back in his girdle,and others laid hold on me.
  

    They smeared my lower limbs with somekind of grease which smelt of resin. One savage who had picked up a brand from one of the little fires dropped some of the stuff on it,and it crackled merrily. He grinned at me--a slow, diabolical grin.
  

     They lashed me to thestake with ropes of green vine. Then they piled dry hay a foot deep around me, and laid above it wood andgreen branches. To make the fuel still greener, they poured water on it. Atthe moment I did not see the object of these preparations, but now I canunderstand it. The dry hay would serve to burn my legs, which had already been anointed with the inflammable grease. So I should suffer a gradual torture, for it would be long ere the flames reached a vital part. Ithink they erred, for they assumed that I had the bodyof an Indian, which does not perish till a blow is struck at its heart; whereas I am confident that any white man would be dead of the anguish long ere the fire had passed beyond his knees.


    I think that was the most awful moment of my life. Indeed I could not have endured it had not my mind beendrugged and my body stupid with fatigue. Men have often asked me what were my thoughts in that hour, while the faggots were laid about my feet.I cannot tell, for I have no very clear memory. The Power which does not break the bruised reed tempered the storm to myfrailty. I could not envisage thefuture, and so was mercifully enabled to look only to the moment. I knew that pain was coming; but I was already inpain, and the sick man does not troublehimself about degrees of suffering. Death, too, was coming; but for that I hadbeen longready. The hardest thing that man can dois to endure,but this was to me no passive endurance; it was an active struggle to show afortitude worthy of the gallant dead.




     -- From John Buchan, Salute To Adventurers (1915)