They reached the place of execution.

Ostap stopped.

He was to be the first to drink the bitter cup.

He glanced at his comrades, raised his hand, and said in a loud voice: "God grant that none of the heretics who stand here may hear, the unclean dogs, how Christians suffer! Let none of us utter a single word." After this he ascended the scaffold.
"Well done, son! well done!" said Bulba, softly, and bent his grey head.
The executioner tore off his old rags; they fastened his hands and feet in stocks prepared expressly, and--We will not pain the reader with a picture of the hellish tortures which would make his hair rise upright on his head.

They were the outcome of that coarse, wild age, when men still led a life of warfare which hardened their souls until no sense of humanity was left in them.