Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/281

 must not be ignored—especially as our ruling will doubtless become a lantern to the feet of later ones. You appear, malefactor, to have committed crimes—and of all these you have been proved guilty by the ingenious arrangement invoked by the learned recorder of my spoken word—which render you liable to hanging, slicing, pressing, boiling, roasting, grilling, freezing, vatting, racking, twisting, drawing, compressing, inflating, rending, spiking, gouging, limb-tying, piece-meal-pruning and a variety of less tersely describable discomforts with which the time of this court need not be taken up. The important consideration is, in what order are we to proceed and when, if ever, are we to stop?"

"Under your benumbing eye, Excellence," suggested Ming-shu resourcefully, "the precedent of taking first that for which the written sign is the longest might be established. Failing that, the names of all the various punishments might be inscribed on separate shreds of parchment and these deposited within your state umbrella. The first withdrawn by an unbiased"

"High Excellence," Kai Lung ventured to interrupt, "a further plan suggests itself which"

"If," exclaimed Ming-shu in irrational haste. "if the criminal proposes to narrate the story of one who in like circumstance"

"Peace!" interposed Shan Tien tactfully. "The felon will only be allowed the usual ten short measures of time for his suggestion, nor must he, under that guise, endeavour to insert an imagined tale."

"Your ruling shall keep straight my bending feet,