“Watch carefully my words,” I said sternly in English, “and bear in mind the preservation of all our lives depends on the part you play.  The woman chief has made choice of you to help in winning mercy from these savages.  I know not why you are the one thus chosen, yet I suspect that fiery crop of hair may have something to do with the honor.  The main point is, are you in a humor to do her bidding?”

“Nay!” he replied, gazing at me stubbornly.

“You refuse to assist in saving your own life, and the lives of your comrades?”

“I touch not the accursed abominations of this place,” he answered, hoarse with anger, “nor will I have aught to do with yonder shameless creature.”

“Sirrah!” I cried, thoroughly aroused by his mulishness, “do you deliberately choose to sacrifice the life of this lady to your bull-headed fanaticism?  Do you refuse to unbend your miserable Connecticut sectarianism, your Puritan cant, although by so doing you might keep your comrades from the horrors of the stake?  If this is what you mean, I denounce you as unworthy to be called a man, and I name your loud protestations of religion no more than a hissing and a byword before the ungodly you profess to despise.  You are no better than a Pharisee, full of loud-mouthed prayers and vain conceit of righteousness, a false prophet, haggling over formalism when the slightest sacrifice of what you hold the letter of the law would result in the salvation of human life.  You call yourself a Christian, a follower of that Nazarene who died for sinners on the cross, deeming yourself better than those who cling to other creed.  You sneer at that rosary in Madame’s fingers, yet do you suppose it possible she would not endeavor to pluck your life from the jaws of death if it lay in her power?  Ay! and never waste speech about abominations in the path.”

“The spirit is of greater value than the body,” he persisted doggedly.  “Yea, ’tis better the flesh perish miserably in the flame than surrender up the soul unto the devil.”

“That is no issue here; you seek to deceive yourself by false words.  I denounce you openly as a false follower, for if I read rightly the language of Holy Writ, it was He whom you so delight to term Master who gave his life freely for His friends.  But you—­you are all words, a charnel-house of dead men’s bones.”

Had he been free I might have rued my hasty words, for his eyes were hot with anger, and he strained fiercely at his bonds in effort to break free.  Yet I felt safe enough beyond the sweep of his great arm, rejoicing that my tongue was sharp enough to penetrate so thick a hide, and make the man squirm beneath his outer vestment of piety.

“You speak falsely,” he bellowed, nearly beside himself.  “Satan puts those foul words upon your lips tempting me to do evil.”