the grip of a senseless rage. "Flog him well and make haste about
it."

Sebastian, who had no time in which to recover himself, made but a
weak resistance when Pancho Cueto locked his wrists into a pair of
clumsy, old-fashioned manacles, first passing the chain around one
of the bars of the iron window-grating which Esteban had
indicated. Sebastian felt that his whole world was tumbling about
his ears. He thought he must be dreaming.

Cueto swung a heavy lash; the sound of his blows echoed through
the quinta, and they summoned, among others, Dona Isabel, who
watched the scene from behind her shutter with much satisfaction.
The guests looked on approvingly.

Sebastian made no outcry. The face he turned to his master,
however, was puckered with reproach and bewilderment. The whip bit
deep; it drew blood and raised welts the thickness of one's thumb;
nevertheless, for the first few moments the victim suffered less
in body than in spirit. His brain was so benumbed, so shocked with
other excitations, that he was well-nigh insensible to physical
pain. That Evangelina, flesh of his flesh, had been sold, that his
lifelong faithfulness had brought such reward as this, that
Esteban, light of his soul, had turned against him--all this was
simply astounding. More his simple mind could not compass for the
moment. Gradually, however, he began to resent the shrieking
injustice of it all, and unsuspected forces gathered inside of
him. They grew until his frame was shaken by primitive savage
impulses.