"They may do what they will," said Warley. "If they take your life, I have no wish to keep mine." "You must not say that, Ernest. God may have a great work for you to do; and if your life is preserved, I shall feel assured it is for that purpose. But we have probably but a short time to pass together; let us make the best use of that." They all knelt down while the missionary offered up a fervent prayer in behalf of each one of them, in which all heartily joined; and they were still engaged in their prayers, when Kobo re-entered, accompanied by his satellites, to announce to them their sentence, or rather that of De Walden. This, he gave them to understand, with diabolical exultation, was to be the most painful form of death that imagination could conceive--one which was resorted to only in the instance of enemies captured in war, upon whom they wished to inflict the worst possible sufferings. De Walden was to be eaten alive by ants! He was to be pegged down on his back over one of the large ant-hills, some three feet in height--great numbers of which were to be found at the distance of a mile or two from the village--his neck, wrists, and ankles firmly secured by thongs of rhinoceros hide, so that it would be impossible to move even an inch to the right or left. He was to be left in this position half an hour or so after nightfall, about which time the ants, which had remained in a state of torpor all day, were wont to come out of their nests in such multitudes as to blacken the whole of the ground round one of their hills. They would be sure to fasten at once on any animal substance near them, and so great was their voracity, that in the course of three or four hours, the largest carcasses would be stripped of every particle of skin or flesh, and be left a bare and whitened skeleton. This, Kobo informed them, was to be the form of death chosen for the missionary. Some of the councillors had suggested death by poison, or a blow from a heavy club; but Maomo, he gave them to understand--Maomo, supported by himself--had insisted that the Bad Spirits would not be appeased, unless the White Enemy died by a death of the greatest agony. As for the others, they would probably be pricked with a lance-head, steeped in the juice of the euphorbia, or the venom of the poison grub. But that would not be finally decided until the following day; only, anyhow, they were quite sure to undergo death in some painful and lingering shape.