The poor wretch, a child born
to degradation and torture, whose cries were heard in heaven, heaved
a deep sigh, then gave vent to a flood of tears. They told how deep
was her anguish, how she struggled against injustice, how sorrow was
burning her very soul. The outpourings of her feelings might have
aroused the sympathies of savage hearts; but the slave monsters were
unmoved. Humbleness, despair, and even death, sat upon her very
countenance; hope had fled her, left her a wreck for whom man had no
pity. And though her prayers ascended to heaven, the God of mercy
seemed to have abandoned her to her tormentors. She came forward
trembling and reluctantly, her countenance changed; she gave a
frowning look at her tormentors, wild and gloomy, shrank back into
the cell, the folds of straight, black hair hanging about her
shoulders.
"Come out here!" Nimrod commands in an angry tone; then, seizing her
by the arm, dragged her forth, and jerked her prostrate on the
ground. Here, like as many fiends in human form, the rest fell upon
her, held her flat to the floor by the hands and feet, her face
downwards, while Nimrod, with a raw hide, inflicted thirty lashes on
her bare back. Her cries and groans, as she lay writhing, the flesh
hanging in quivering shreds, and lifting with the lash,--her appeals
for mercy, her prayers to heaven, her fainting moans as the agony of
her torture stung into her very soul, would have touched a heart of
stone. But, though her skin had not defiled her in the eyes of the
righteous, there was none to take pity on her, nor to break the
galling chains; no! the punishment was inflicted with the measured
coolness of men engaged in an every-day vocation.
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