Alas! I well knew the secret of his cruel mercies.

He meant to reserve us for the sacrifice.



VIII. SAVED!


Why should I linger over the sufferings of the miserable week that
followed our capture? Hauled back to my former home, I was again made
the object of the mocking reverence of my captors. Ah, how often, in my
reckless youth, have my serious aunts warned me that I "would be a goat
at the last"! Too true, too true; now I was to be a scapegoat, to be
driven forth, as these ignorant and strangely perverted people believed,
with the sins of the community on my head, those sins which would,
according to their _miserable superstition_, be expiated by the death,
and consumed away by the burning, of myself and William Bludger!

The week went by, as all weeks must, and at length came the solemn day
which they call Thargeelyah, the day more sacred than any other to their
idol, Apollon. Long before sunrise the natives were astir; indeed, I do
not think they went to bed at all, but spent the night in hideous orgies.
I know that, tossing sleepless through the weary hours, I heard the
voices of young men and women singing on the hillsides, and among the
myrtle groves which are holy to the most disreputable of their deities, a
female, named Aphrodighty. Harps were twanging too, and I heard the
refrain of one of the native songs, "To-night they love who never loved
before; to-night let him who loves love all the more." The words have