This was the stake at which the prisoners were to suffer torture, and
around which the chief interest of the festivities was to centre. The
feast was to continue for three days, according to the number of
prisoners on hand. One of them was, by his behavior under the
ingenious tortures devised especially for the occasion, to furnish the
principal amusement for each day. At its close, if he were not already
dead, he was to be sacrificed.
It was generally understood that the most important of the prisoners,
the young white chief, was to be reserved for the last and crowning day
of the feast, and for him an especial committee were inventing a series
of new and peculiarly painful tortures.
At all hours of the day crowds of women and children gathered about the
hut in which Rene was confined, in the hope of catching a glimpse of
him. Their delight knew no bounds when, occasionally, one of the more
good-natured of his guards would lift the mat of braided palmetto fibre
that hung before the entrance, and allow them to peep in at him, and
taunt him with hints of what he was to undergo.
Wearily did the long hours pass with the unhappy boy as he lay thus
friendless among cruel enemies, helplessly awaiting the fate from which
he shrank so fearfully, and yet from which he could conceive no manner
of escape.
CHAPTER XVI
HAS-SE RECEIVES THE TOKEN
Far away from the scenes of sorrow, suffering, savage cruelty, and
savage rejoicing of which the shadowy depths of the great swamp were
witness, in the pleasant land of the Alachuas, the close of the second
day after the one on which Rene de Veaux had been held a prisoner into
the Seminole village presented a picture of peace and happy
contentment.
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