CHAPTER XII.
CAPTAIN ARCOLL SENDS A MESSAGE I once read--I think in some Latin writer--the story of a man who was crushed to a jelly by the mere repeated touch of many thousand hands.
His murderers were not harsh, but an infinite repetition of the gentlest handling meant death.

I do not suppose that I was very brutally manhandled in the cave.

I was trussed up tight and carried out to the open, and left in the care of the guards.

But when my senses returned I felt as if I had been cruelly beaten in every part.

The raw-hide bonds chafed my wrists and ankle and shoulders, but they were the least part of my aches.