But in spite of all his terrible threatenings, I bode still and answered him never a word. They laid logs of driftwood upon the fire, till the whole inside of the cave grew bright and clear; and all the monstrous deformity of the women and the cruel hideousness of the men were made apparent as in broad daylight. Some of them were painted and stained like demons, and danced and leaped through the fire like them, too. For such monsters have not been heard of, much less seen, in the history of any country as were Sawny Bean and his crew in the cave upon the seashore of Bennanbrack. ’Bring me a knife,’ cried John Mure from where he sat, for he appeared like a chief devil among a company of gibbering lubber fiends. He had still his grey cloak about him. His plumed hat was upon his head, and he looked, save for the eyes of him in which the fires of hell burned, a civil, respectable, well-put-on man of means and substance. As, indeed, save for his evil heart he might have been, for he came of as good a family as the Earl of Cassillis, or, as it might be, as I myself, Launcelot Kennedy of Kirrieoch. So when Auchendrayne asked for a knife, Sawny Bean himself, the ruffian kemper, low-browed, buck-toothed, and inhuman, brought it to him with a grin. He made as if he would have set it in me to the hilt. But John Mure stayed him. ’Bide,’ he said, ’not so fast. There is long and sweet pleasuring to come before that—such slow, relishing delight, such covetous mouseplay of the brindled cat, such luxurious tiger-licking of the delicate skin till it be raw, such well-conceited dainty torments as when one would bite his love and be glad of it. He shall taste them all, this frolic squire of errant-dames, this gamesome player upon pipes, this curious handler of quaint love tunes. Ere we pluck the red rose of his life, he shall sate himself with new delicious experience—rarer than the handling of many maidens’ tresses.’ I was moved to speak to him. ’I ask not mercy,’ said I, ’for I own that I would have killed you if I could. But as you are a valiant man, give me a sword and let me make a stand for it against you all, that as I have lived so I may also die fighting.’ But he mocked me, hurrying on in his heady turmoil of words.