Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/237

 "'If a stone were thus burnt, would it not change his nature? How much more we that are flesh and blood?'"

To such reasoning there could be no reply. The English prisoners had tasted too deeply the bitter pangs of the torture chamber, had themselves offended too much against truth under the infernal stimulus applied, to be able to raise their voices in censure. So with friendly words of farewell they passed on.

Outside the hall was an open space, overlooked by the windows of the castle, and a kind of gallery communicating with the official quarters. When all the prisoners had been collected at this point an official appeared in the gallery and read out in due form the sentence which had been passed by the Council. Thereafter a procession was formed to conduct the prisoners to the scaffold. From motives of policy, doubtless, the route taken was a long and circuitous one which led through the town. Escorted by a strong military guard the melancholy cortège slowly made its way through lines of soldiery to the execution ground.

In their last moments the condemned Englishmen showed themselves worthy of their race. Armed with the consciousness of innocence and strengthened spiritually by their night of devotion, they looked composedly outwards towards the unseen. Coulson, now, as ever, a leader, drew from his breast a paper on which he had written a prayer suitable to the occasion with, at its conclusion, a strong declaration of innocence. In a loud, firm voice which penetrated far in the still morning air he read the simple sentences in which, on behalf of himself and his fellow-prisoners, he invoked the favour of the Deity in this awful crisis. When the final words of supplication had died away he cast the paper into the air, it fluttered