The misery endured by this poor wretch is indescribable. In this instance, in order to secure enhanced effect, according to the lights of Major Bach, the prisoner was forced to stand on tip-toe against the post, while the upper rope was passed around his neck. This rope was left somewhat loose, and as nearly as I can describe, was looped in the form of a double knot. Being on tip-toe the hapless wretch was speedily transferred, by his toes giving way, to a hanging position. His head fell forward, as he gradually lapsed into unconsciousness, until it pressed against the restraining slip-knot. The consequence was that he suffered the agonies of slow strangulation in addition to the searing of his hands and ankles, while the weight of his body dragged his neck more tightly than otherwise would have been the case, against the upper rope. His face presented a terrifying sight, being quite blue, from his inability to breathe, except with the greatest difficulty. His mouth was wide open and his tongue, which protruded, was exceedingly swollen. His eyes were half out of their sockets. But he had to serve the sentence of four hours, and although he became unconscious time after time and had to be released, water always brought him to his senses to undergo a further spell upon the fiendish rack until the sentence had been well and truly served. On one occasion a poor wretch condemned to this torture, after having become unconscious, was taken down, revived, and incarcerated for the night in the guard-room. The next morning he was marched out again and re-tied up to complete his sentence. Major Bach, as if suddenly inspired, conceived a fiendish means of accentuating the agony of a prisoner condemned to this punishment. The man would be tied to the post about the middle of the morning. The summer sun beat fiercely upon the post and the man's hat was removed. Consequently, as the poor wretch's head dropped forward on his chest, its crown became exposed to the fierce heat of the sun. Thus to the pain of the torture inflicted by the tightly tied ropes, and the strangling sensation produced by the throat pressing against the restraining rope, was added the racking torment of intolerable heat playing upon a sensitive part of the human body. The astonishing wonder is that none of the unhappy wretches suffered sun-stroke or went crazy while bound up in this manner, because the sun's heat intensely aggravated the agonies of thirst. But the sun-bath consummated Major Bach's greatest ambition. It caused the victim to writhe and twist more frantically, which in turn forced him to shriek and howl more vociferously and continuously.