As she did so, the professor, closely followed by Lobelalatutu, made a dash for the gangway-ladder, down which they hastily descended, and, dropping the rope ladder over the side, rapidly scrambled down to the ground. A few yards away lay the object for which they were making, and a dozen rapid strides took them to it. Prepared as von Schalckenberg was for the sight that met his eyes, he yet sickened with a deadly nausea as he gazed down upon the dreadful object that lay stretched out at his feet. At the first glance an uninstructed observer would have found it somewhat difficult to say precisely what it was that he was looking upon; but the professor, compelling himself to look closely, saw that it was the naked body of a tall and finely-built savage stretched at full length upon the ground, the upstretched arms and outspread legs being firmly secured by many turns of stout thongs to four long stakes driven so deeply into the earth that by no possible exertion of strength could the victim free himself. Merely to lie exposed in this fashion, immovably fixed to the earth, until death from starvation and thirst came to the relief of the sufferer would, one might suppose, be considered a sufficiently severe punishment to satisfy every demand of justice--to say nothing of the exactions of revenge; but such a death was much too easy to be acceptable to a man whose lust of cruelty was so insatiable as that of M'Bongwele. This monster's chief delight was to gloat over the sufferings of others, and much of his time was very agreeably passed in meditating upon and devising schemes of elaborate cruelty for the punishment of those unhappy individuals who were so unfortunate as to offend him, or incur the suspicion that they were his enemies. Siswani, however, the present victim, was not undergoing any experimental form of torture of M'Bongwele's own invention; he was simply suffering a form of death that, from the protracted and exquisitely excruciating character of its agonies, enjoys a very wide popularity among African savages. It consists in the eyelids of the victim being cut off, to expose the unprotected eyeballs to the fierce glare of the sun--and, later, to other and even worse torments--after which he is led out to some selected spot where an ants' nest of suitable size is known to exist. Arrived there, four stout stakes are driven deeply into the ground at a proper distance apart round the nest, stout raw-hide thongs are attached to the victim's wrists and ankles, and the whole of his naked body is then carefully anointed with honey, after which he is thrown to the ground and stretched out on his back on the top of the ants' nest, and there immovably bound to the four stakes. Then the nest is broken under him and the fiercely exasperated little insects are left to work their savage will upon his unprotected body, to which they are strongly attracted by the odour of the honey.