Next day his torment waxed with the sun. He plodded doggedly on, and Pavlof, from behind, watched the martyrdom keenly, and his trained eye told him that the man could not stand it much longer. It was painful to watch, even at a distance, the sufferer's vain attempts at easement; the chained hands knitted behind the swollen neck; clasped on the crown of his half-shaven head with the dangling chains about his ears; the heavy head thrown back to balance the weight in front; the gradual bowing of the broad shoulders; the blind, stumbling step. "He can't stand much more of that," said Pavlof. "He'll either break down or break out." But Ignatz staggered through the heat of the morning journey, and fell flat only when they reached the eating-place. Pavlof tried to get him to eat, but the blood-shot eyes looked dumbly at him out of the black-flushed face and he only shook his head. The captain strolled round smoking a cigarette. He came to have a look at his work. "Well, Mr. President? How goes it now? Stand up when I speak to you!" he ordered, and Ignatz staggered to his feet and stood swaying. "You won't be quite so forward in forming an artel another time, my man, or if you do you'll keep it in order, eh?" But Ignatz had nothing to say. "When you reach the étape to-night you shall shed one chain, and I shall advise the captain of the next convoy to take off one each night till you get back to normal. By that time you will have learned your lesson maybe." He flicked the ash from his cigarette and turned to go. Then, instantly, with the spring of a tiger, without a sound save the indrawing of a great breath, and a clank and a dull thud, Ignatz was on him. With his bunched fetters he felled him like an ox, sat on him, and, before the others had found their wits, was demolishing the captain's last semblance to humanity with smashing blows from twenty-five pounds of rusty iron chain. It was done in a moment. The captain was probably dead before he reached the ground, for the great knots of chain came down on the back of his head with the force of a sledge-hammer But Ignatz sat on his body pounding away still as if his own life depended on it. All who saw had leaped up with cries of horror. It was the sergeant of the convoy who took the only way to end the matter. He snatched a rifle from a gaping Cossack, took careful aim, and fired. Ignatz, in the act of pounding, rolled over on his victim and the episode was closed. The sergeant took charge of the convoy, the bodies were placed in one of the telégas, and the procession moved on.