Osman made a motion with his hand as a signal to the four seamen, who, advancing quickly, seized the negro, and held him fast. One of the men then stripped off the poor man's shirt. At the same moment Osman drew the red-hot iron from the fire, and deliberately laid it on Peter's back, the skin of which hissed and almost caught fire, while a cloud of smoke arose from it. The hapless victim did not struggle. He was well aware that resistance would be useless. He merely clenched his teeth and hands. But when Osman removed the iron and applied it to another part of his broad back a deep groan of agony burst from the poor fellow, and beads of perspiration rolled from his brow. At first George Foster could scarcely believe his eyes. He was almost paralysed by an intense feeling of horror. Then there came a tremendous rebound. Rage, astonishment, indignation, fury, and a host of cognate passions, met and exploded in his bosom. Uttering a yell that harmonised therewith, he sprang forward, hit Osman a straight English left-hander between the eyes, and followed it up with a right-hander in the gullet, which sent the cruel monster flat on the floor, and his head saluted the bricks with an effective bump. In his fall the Moor overturned the brazier, and brought the glowing fire upon his bosom, which it set alight--his garments being made of cotton. To leap up with a roar of pain and shake off the glowing cinders was the work of a moment. In the same moment two of the stout seamen threw themselves on the roused midshipman, and overcame him--not, however, before one of them had received a black eye and the other a bloody nose, for Moors do not understand the art of self-defence with the fists. "Down with him!" shouted Osman, when he had extinguished the flames. He seized a supple cane, or wand, as the seamen threw Foster down, and held his feet in the air, after tearing off his shoes. Wild with fury, Osman brought the cane down on the poor youth's soles. It was his first taste of the bastinado. The agony took him by surprise, and extorted a sharp yell. Next moment his teeth were in the calf of one of the men's legs, and his right hand grasped the baggy trousers of the other. A compound kick and plunge overturned them both, and as they all fell into a heap, the cheek of one seaman received a stinging blow that was meant for the middy's soles. Things had reached this crisis, and Peter the Great, having hurled aside his two assailants, was on the point of rushing to the rescue of his friend, when the door burst open, and Ben-Ahmed stood before them quivering with indignation. "Is this your return for my forbearance? Be-gone!" he shouted to his son in a voice of thunder. Osman knew his father too well to require a second bidding. He left the room angrily, and a look from Ben-Ahmed sent the four sailors after him.