"You know this?
It is a rosary of pain that has wrought the conversion of many a stubborn heretic.

It is capable of screwing the eyes out of a man's head by way of helping him to see reason.

As you please." He flung the length of knotted cord to one of the negroes, who in an instant made it fast about the prisoner's brows.

Then between cord and cranium the black inserted a short length of metal, round and slender as a pipe-stem.

That done he rolled his eyes towards Levasseur, awaiting the Captain's signal.
Levasseur considered his victim, and beheld him tense and braced, his haggard face of a leaden hue, beads of perspiration glinting on his pallid brow just beneath the whipcord.
Mademoiselle cried out, and would have risen: but her guards restrained her, and she sank down again, moaning.
"I beg that you will spare yourself and your sister," said the Captain, "by being reasonable.