Page:Surprising adventures of John Roach.pdf/18

 an aspect replete with terror to my trembling heart. He then for some time looked at his horse and at me alternately, with the greatest earnestness imaginable. I now judged my dying moment was most certainly arrived however, the august tyrant did not proceed in that assassinous manner I expected but rather seemed as though he wished the whole fraternity to participate the pleasure of putting an end to my miserable existence: for he ordered me to be placed in the centre of the whole tribe, and there tied up to a flake, that they might have the savage satisfaction of exercising their arrows in my miserable execution.

I was accordingly fixed to the stake and the ferocious beings gathered around me, seemingly big with impatience to execute the infernal sentence. Here it is much easier for the sympathetic reader to picture to himself the slate of my mental powers, than for me to give him any just description thereof    I must however observe, that after a transient circle of wild thoughts and fearful imagination, my terrified mind began to resume its wonted calm: and seeing my last terrestrial moment seemed hastily approaching, I humbly resigned myself to the mercy of that celestial Being before whom I now judged I must shortly appear. But as soon as the savage crew were drawn up in order, and had prepared themselves for the enjoyment of their destructive pleasure, a venerable old man, who was their physician stood up, and harangued to them for