had brought us departed, leaving us to the
two Judges who stood in a corner of the
room. The Judges were small, thin men,
grey and bent. They gave the signal to the
two strong hooded ones.

They tore the clothes from our body,
they threw us down upon our knees and
they tied our hands to the iron post.
The first blow of the lash felt as if our
spine had been cut in two. The second
blow stopped the first, and for a second we
felt nothing, then the pain struck us in our
throat and fire ran in our lungs without air.
But we did not cry out.

The lash whistled like a singing wind.
We tried to count the blows, but we lost count.
We knew that the blows were falling upon our back.
Only we felt nothing upon our back any longer.
A flaming grill kept dancing before our eyes,
and we thought of nothing save that grill, a grill,
a grill of red squares, and then we knew
that we were looking at the squares of the
iron grill in the door, and there were also
the squares of stone on the walls, and the
squares which the lash was cutting upon our back,
crossing and re-crossing itself in our flesh.

Then we saw a fist before us. It knocked