It is impossible at this day to fathom the mystery of this terrible relic of some remote superstition.  It may have been that the abhorrence and extinction of evil was roughly typified, or that it was understood that the death of the victim would, as if he were a scapegoat, cleanse the worshippers of the sins with which he was thus loaded.  It is idle to grope where all is, and must be, dark; all that can be asserted with any certainty is that the preliminary eulogy, a more modern practice, was intended to enhance the value of the offering which they were about to make to the Gods.

The warriors now resumed their burden, and a procession was formed towards the pyre, on which the litter-bearers, mounting by an inclined plane, placed the doomed youth.  Judith ascended the huge boulder, which was some eight feet higher than the pyre at its foot.  The chief and people grouped themselves round its base.  The priests stood ready to apply the torch when the sorceress gave the signal, and the distant watchman on the Guct waited in his turn for the first flash of flame to kindle the beacon which was to set the assailing forces in motion.

Judith turned to the expectant crowd:  her glance was searching, in her eye was an ineffable look of scorn.  “Down on your knees!” she said, “craven sons, whose sires would blush to own you!  You who have steeped your hearts in pride and boastfulness!  Were your fathers slow to draw the sword and quick to sheathe it?  Did they cower by their hearths when warm blood was being spilt? did they feast when others fought? would they not have leaped, as the tempest rushes from its caves, to scatter like the sand those who should have dared to bend the knee to false Gods, objects of their loathing and derision?  Runs this noble blood in your stagnant veins?  From giants ye have become pigmies!” The majestic contempt with which these words had been delivered had a crushing effect.  She continued her harangue for some time in the same strain.  Every Voizin’s head was bowed, every form bent and trembling.  The sorceress then, slowly turning, faced seaward.  Her arms assumed the well-known beseeching attitude, the serpent bracelet glittering fiercely in the sun.  Her voice changed, became softer.  “Yet they are my people!” she continued, “and the last of our race.  Ennoble them, great Gods! quicken their hearts and spare them!” Looking outward with the rapt look of a prophetess in whom, though torn with tempests of fanaticism and of passion, human and superhuman, no thought was mean, no sentiment ignoble, she poured out this her prayer; not for mercy!—­her Gods knew not this attribute; nor could she understand it; if the craven continued to be a craven she felt he were better dead;—­not for peace and contentment!—­to these blessings neither she nor they attached value;—­but for fearlessness and steadfastness of purpose, and also for courage to die for the truth! there were petitions poured out by this woman that would have honoured the lips of the champion of any creed.