"On the handsome young Frenchman's dark curly hair, glistening with the whitening snow that fell upon it, and on his tender skin reddening in the frosty atmosphere, on the swelling muscles of his athletic form, on a half healed sabre-wound, and on the lineaments of a face that then expressed the extremity of mental agony, fell full the wavering light of the uplifted torches. The Dutch, accustomed to every species of extra-judicial cruelty by sea and land, looked on with the most grave stolidity and apathetic indifference; while I felt an astonishment and indignation that rapidly gave place to undisguised horror. "'Flog!' "The other prisoner uttered a groan that seemed to come from his very heart, and then covered his ears and eyes with his hands. Wielded by a muscular trumpeter, an immense scourge of many-knotted cords was brought down with one fell sweep on the white back of the victim, and nine livid bars, each red, as if seared by a hot iron, rose under the infliction, and again the terrible instrument was reared by the trumpeter at the full stretch of his sinewy arm. "Monsieur will be aware, that until the late Revolution of 1688, this kind of punishment was unknown here and elsewhere, save in Holland; and though I have seen soldiers run the gauntlet, ride the mare, and beaten by the martinets, I shall never oh, no! never forget the sensation of horror with which this (to me) new punishment of the poor Frenchman inspired me; and, sure I am, that our great Duke of Marlborough could in no way have anticipated it. "Accustomed, as I have said, to every kind of cruel severity, unmoved and stoically the Dutch looked on, with their grey, lacklustre eyes, dull, unmeaning, and passionless in their stolidity, contrasting strongly with the expression of startled horror depicted in the strained eyeballs and bent brows of the victim's brother, when after a time he dared to look on this revolting punishment. Save an ill-repressed sob, or half-muttered interjection from the suffering man, no other sound broke the stillness of the place, where a thousand horsemen stood in close order, but the sputtering of the torches in the red light of which our breaths were ascending like steam. Yes! there was one other sound, and it was a horrible one--the monotonous whiz of the scourge, as it cut the keen frosty air and descended on the lacerated back of the fainting prisoner. Sir, I see that my story disturbs you.