‘PLANNING THE DETAILS, 601

poor Russian, who affronted them in their worship just as you did,
and whom they took prisoner. After they had lamed him with an
arrow that he could not run away, they took him and stripped him
stark naked, and set him up on the top of the idol monster, and
stood all round him, and shot as many arrows into him as would
stick over his whole body, and then they burned him, and all the
arrows sticking in him, as a sacrifice to the idol.” “And was
this the same idol?” ‘“ Yes,” says he, “the very same.” “ Well,”
says I, “T’ll tell you a story.” So I related the story of our
men at Madagascar, and how they burned and sacked the village
there, and killed man, woman, and child, for their murdering one
of our men, just as it is related before; and when I had done, I
added, that I thought we ought to do so to this village.

He listened very attentively to the story; but when I talked of
doing so to that village, says he, “ You mistake very much. It
was not this village: it was almost a hundred miles from this
place ; but it was the same idol, for they carry him about in pro-
cession all over the country.” ‘Well, then,” says I, “then that
‘idol ought to be punished for it; and it shall,” says I, “if I live
this night out.”

In a word, finding me resolute, he liked the design, and told me
I should not go alone, but he would go with me, and bring a stout
fellow, one of his countrymen, to go also with us; “and one,”
says he, “as famous for his zeal as you can desire any one to be,
against such devilish things as these.” In a word, he brought me.
his comrade, a Scotsman, whom he called Captain Richardson, and
I gave him a full account of what I had seen, and, in a word, of
what I intertded; and he told me readily he would go with me if
it cost him his life: so we agreed to go only us three. I had,
indeed, proposed it to my ‘partner, but he declined it. He said he
was ready to assist me to the utmost, and upon all occasions, for
my defence, but that this was an adventure quite out of his way.
So, I say, we resolved upon our work, only us three and my man-
servant, and to put it in execution that night about midnight,
with all the secrecy imaginable.

However, upon second thoughts, we were willing to delay it
till the next night, because the caravan being to set forward in the