Next day the Javan admiral took one of the incendiaries, who was found hid in a privy. This was he who put the fire to our house. He confessed to the admiral that he had clipped many ryals, and had counterfeited some; he even confessed some things concerning our matter, but not much, and would tell us nothing. Because of his obstinacy, and that he had set our house on fire, I caused him to be burnt, by means of sharp irons thrust under the nails of his thumbs, fingers, and toes, and the nails to be torn, off; and, because he never flinched, we thought his hands and feet had been benumbed with tying, wherefore we burnt him in other parts, as the hands, arms, shoulders, and neck, but even this had no effect. We then burnt him quite through the hands, and tore out the flesh and sinews with rasps, causing his shins to be knocked with hot searing irons. I then caused cold iron screws to be screwed into the bones of his arms, and suddenly snatched out, and to break all the bones of his fingers and toes with pincers: Yet for all this he never shed a tear, neither once turned his head aside, nor stirred hand or foot; but, when we asked a question, he would put his tongue between his teeth, and strike his chin on his knees to bite it off. After using the utmost extremity of torture in vain, I made him be again laid fast in irons, when the ants, which greatly abound there, got into his wounds, and tormented him worse than we had done, as might be seen by his gestures. The king's officers desired me to shoot him to death, which I thought too good a death for such a villain; but as they insisted, we led him out into the fields and made him fast to a stake. The first shot carried away a piece of his arm, bone and all; the next went through his breast near the shoulder, on which he bent down his head and looked at the wound. At the third shot, one of our men used a bullet cut in three pieces, which struck his breast in a triangle, on which he sunk as low as the stake would allow. Finally, between, our men and the Hollanders he was shot almost in pieces.[125] [Footnote 125: This monster might have graced the holy office! He must have delighted in cruelty, or he could not have devised such horrible torments, and given a recital of them. The Dutch at Amboyna did not inflict more savage tortures on the English. Had not these things been related by the author himself, we could scarcely have believed such cruelty could have existed in an Englishman.--_Astl._ I. 295, a.]