Vellenaux - A Novel by Edmund William Forrest
page 121 of 234 (51%)
page 121 of 234 (51%)
|
and stripped from her person. A large empty chest, which usually
contained clothing, caught the attention of one of the number, and a fiendish thought flashed through his mind, which he communicated to some of the others, and they proceeded to carry it out. Collecting the broken furniture, bed linen, etc., they made a large fire and placed the box in question thereon; then tossed the helpless children into it and literally roasted them alive in the presence of the agonized mother, who made frantic attempts to break from her captors, and rescue her offspring, but it was in vain; they held her firmly until the chest and its contents were reduced to embers; then two of them plunged their creeses into her naked bosom, and flung her bleeding body into the fire to be consumed like those of her children. Other enormities were being enacted in various parts of Goolampore during the short time the mutineers remained there. But an act of unparalleled atrocity was perpetuated on the Postmaster and his wife, who, it appears, had, on the morning in question, gone to look at their new Bungalow which was in course of erection in the suburbs, when they were pounced upon by a body of Sepoys, who were making good their exodus from the station, having no desire to come in contact with the horse artillery, the booming of whose guns sounded not at all pleasantly in their ears. These inhuman wretches dashed at their victims and, after tormenting them almost to madness by their devilish cruelties, dragged them to a sawpit, where pieces of square timber, which had been partially cut into planks for building purposes, lay. The unhappy pair were then bound on two separate planks, then another plank was placed on the top of each, and tightly bound together with strips of fine bamboo; the monsters laughing and gesticulating at what they termed the living sandwiches, dainty morsels to be offered up as a sacrifice to their Deities. The crowning act of this fearful drama was at last enacted by the remorseless villains: With two large cross-cut saws, sawing into two feet lengths the planks which |
|