The sight of the knife in his hand roused me to action. Reaching out my fettered hands I suddenly grasped his ankles and jerked his feet from under him, and as he came down flat on his back, his head struck the hard floor with the sound of a pavior’s hammer. I dragged his unconscious body towards me and searched for the knife, which I found sticking in his back; for he had dropped it as he fell, and fallen upon it with such force that its point stood two inches out at the front of his chest. I pulled the knife out, and, jamming its wet and slippery haft between my knees, sawed through the rope that bound my hands together. With my hands free I soon cut through the cord that confined my feet, and the halter by which I was tethered to the peg, and then I rose to my feet and stretched my stiffened limbs. The fetish-men and the executioners were by this time thoroughly panic-stricken, and I could see them, by the dim, red glow, struggling frantically to free themselves from the surging crowd which hemmed them in. I stole softly to one of the piers and stood by it, knife in hand, ready to defend myself if anyone should come my way, and surveyed this astonishing scene of slaughter. One after another the fetish-men dropped, stabbed with their own weapons or felled by the hammer of the furious Moshi, whose gaunt form could be seen in the middle of the crowd like that of some avenging demon. The untended furnace died down by degrees until its glow faded away and the place was plunged into total darkness, and the swaying mass of shadowy figures grew more and more shadowy and dim until they vanished into utter obscurity. And out of that black inferno came a din so awful that I shuddered as I listened. Howls of rage, shrieks of terror, and yells of agony, mingled in such a soul-shaking concert as might have belched up from the very mouth of Hell; and above it all rose the infuriate bellowing of the Moshi and the rhythmical thud of his hammer. I stood rooted to the ground and fairly quaking with horror as scream after scream rang out through the darkness and told of the murderous work that was going on. Suddenly a great tongue of fire rose out of the floor and filled the cavern with a lurid glare. Someone had kicked one of the big candles into the furnace, and the melted oil had burst into flame. And what a scene its light shone upon! The floor was strewn with prostrate forms, some distorted and still, others yet writhing and clutching at one another, and all dabbled with blood. The few survivors were gathered into a crowd and locked together in the most inextricable confusion; and, as they swayed backward and forward, they fought like wild beasts, holding on with fingers twined in one another’s hair, biting, scratching, and slashing indiscriminately with weapons that had been wrenched from the priests or the executioners.