Page:Life and unparalleled voyages and adventures of Ambrose Gwinnett (1).pdf/10

 mind, God help me! was, with long agitation, become so unfeeling, that I was in a manner insensible to every object about me; but I heard, without the least emotion, the sheriff whisper to the executioner to make what dispatch he could, and I suffered him to tuck me up like a log of wood, being unconscious of what he was doing.

I can give no account of what I felt while I was hanging, only that I remembered, after being turned off, something for a little appeared about me like a blaze of fire; nor do I know how long I hung. No doubt, the violence of the weather favoured me greatly in that circumstance. What I am now going to tell you, I learned from my brother; which was, that, after having hung for about half an hour, the sheriff's officers all went off, and I was cut down by the executioner; but when he came to put the irons upon me, it was found a mistake had been made, and that the irons of the other man, which were much too large for me, had been sent instead of mine. This they remedied as well as they could by stuffing rags between my body and the hoops that surrounded it; after which I was taken, according to my sentence, to the place appointed, and hung on a gibbet, which was ready prepared.

The cloth over my face was but slightly tied, and suffering no pressure from the irons, which stood a great way from it, was, I suppose, soon detached by the wind, which was then rather violent; and probably its blowing upon my bare face expedited my recovery; certain it is, that in this awful and tremendous situation I came to myself.

It was no doubt a very great blessing that I did not immediately return so perfectly to my senses as to have a feeling of things about me; yet I had a sort of recollection of what had happened, and in some measure was sensible where I was.

The gibbet was placed in a corner of a small common field where my sister’s cows usually went; and