The crack of the whip divided up the silence into periods of agony.
When the count was done the victim was still conscious.

Schubert and a sergeant dragged him to his feet, and hauled him to the table.

Four other men--two sergeants and two natives--passed a rope round the table legs.

Schubert lifted the victim by the elbows so that his head could pass through the noose, and when that was accomplished the man had to stand on tiptoe on the soap-box in order to breathe at all.
"All ready!" announced Schubert, and jumped off with a laugh, his white tunic bloody from contact with the victim's tortured back.
"Los!" roared the commandant The men hauled on the rope.

Table and soap-box came tumbling away, and the victim spun in the air on nothing, spinning round, and round, and round--slower and slower and slower--then back the other way round faster and faster.
They say hanging is a merciful death--that the pressure of rope on two arteries produces anesthesia, but few are reported to have come back to tell of the experience.