Now, under the direction of their chief, the freebooters were rifling the packs--and at first found not much in them, for they were for the most part stuffed out with dummy matter, to convey the idea that their owner had done so bad a trade as not to be worth plundering. But everything that could possibly conceal a coin was promptly laid open by the expeditious process of a blow with a stone hammer or the slash of a tulwar, and soon a goodly pile of rupees lay heaped up ready for division. Murad Afzul grinned with delight. "God is good," he said, rubbing his hands. "The spoils of the infidel hath he delivered to the true believer. Yet, O fat pig, it is not enough. Ha! not enough." "Not enough? But it is my all, Sirdar Sahib; yea, my all," groaned the trader. "Wah-wah! but I am poor, and have not the wherewith to start life afresh." "It is not enough," repeated the other, the glitter of his eyes and the fell meaning of his tone becoming terrible in its significance. "Ten thousand rupees must be added to it." "Ten thousand! How can I find such a sum, Sirdar Sahib, I who am but a poor man? I have not a tenth of it." "Now art thou blowing up the fire which shall consume thine own limbs, yet slowly, thou foul dog. Wait. Thou shalt taste how it feels." At a signal the prisoner was seized and bound. The while, others were heating an old gun-barrel in a fire which had been kindled when they first halted. Then they brought it towards him. At the sight the miserable wretch uttered a loud scream of terror and despair. "Squeal louder, pig," jeered Murad Afzul. "There is none to hear thee save these rocks, and they are accustomed to such sounds. Ha! ha!" The miserable man struggled frantically, promising to pay anything if they would refrain from torturing him. But the lust of cruelty, now awakened in those ferocious natures, would not be allayed, and the hot iron was laid hissing to the thigh of their victim, whose frenzied and agonising yells rang in deafening and fiend-like echoes from the surrounding rocks, grim and pitiless as though rejoicing in the act of savagery upon which they glared down. Then Murad Afzul, too experienced in such matters to prolong the agony unduly, made a sign that it should cease. "How likest thou that, pig?" he said. "Did not thy fat frizzle? I have a mind to send a slice of it to the swine-eating Feringhi at Mazaran. Did it hurt, the kiss of the hot iron? Yet that was but the beginning. How would it feel lasting the whole day. Think, for thou wilt now have a little time."