Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/236

 them many islanders from without, men who had known and fought with Courthope and with whose pity mingled a fierce feeling of anger and bitter disappointment at the era of hopeless subjection which the approaching execution seemed so inexorably to usher in.

Meanwhile, in the great hall of the castle all the prisoners were assembled for the grim pageantry which was to precede the final awful rites. At the door of the chamber were " the quit and pardoned," to whom with streaming eyes and broken voices the prisoners tendered their last farewells. Standing now on the threshold of the other world the condemned once more affirmed their innocence, and solemnly charged their more fortunate colleagues "to bear witnesse to their friends in England . . . that they died not traitors, but so many innocents merely murdered by the Hollanders, whome they prayed God to forgive their blood-thirstinesse and to have mercy upon their own soules."

On one side of the hall, curious spectators of this farewell scene, were the Japanese prisoners, who with the stolidity of their race [stood quietly awaiting their doom. When the English prisoners were brought near to them the Japanese in terms of mingled surprise and reproach said —

"'O you Englishmen, where did wee ever in our lives eat with you, talk with you, or (to our remembrance) see you?'

"The Englishmen replied: 'Why, then, have you accused us?'"

Then, says the record, " The poore men, perceiving they were made believe each had accused others before they had so done, indeed, showed them their tortured bodies and said—