"Please, Master!" I cried. "Do not beat me! I cannot stand pain! You do not understand! I am not a common girl! It hurts me! I am too delicate to be beaten!"
I heard the men and girls about laughing. I hung by the wrists, miserable. My thigh felt as though it were burning. Tears, streamed from my eyes. I coughed, and could not breathe. I heard the voice of Rask of Treve. "To begin," he was saying, "you will receive one stroke for each letter of the word, "Lair," then one stroke for each letter of the word "Thief', and then a stroke for each letter of the word "Traitress'. You will count the strokes."
I sobbed.
"Count," commanded Rask of Treve.
"I am illiterate," I wept. "I do not know how many to count!"
"There are four characters in the first expression," said Inge.
I looked at her with horror. I had not seen her until now. I did not want her to see me being beaten. I saw, too, now, for the first time, that Rena, too, stood nearby. I did not want them to see me being beaten.
"You made a great fuss when you were branded," said Inge.
"That is certainly true," agreed Rena.
"Count," commanded Rask of Treve.
"One!" I cried out in misery.
Suddenly my back exploded. I screamed but there was no sound. There seemed no breath in my body. And then there was only pain, and I almost lost consciousness. I hung by the wrists. There had been the terrible sound of the leather, and then the pain.
I could not stand it.
"Count!" I heard.
"No, no! I cried.
"Count," urged Inge, "or it will go hard with you." "Count," pressed Rena. "Count!" The lash will not lower your value," she said. "The straps are too broad. They only punish."
"Two," I wept.
Again the leather fell and I gasped and twisted, hanging, burning from the pole. "Count!" said Rask of Treve.
"I cannot!" I wept. "I cannot."
"Three," said Ute. "I will count for her."
The lash fell again.
"Four," said Ute.
Twice, in my beating I lost consciousness, and twice I was revived, chilled water thrown on me.
At last the strokes had been counted. I hung my head down, helpless. "Now," said Rask of Treve, "I shall beat you until it pleases me to stop." Ten more strokes he gave to the helpless slave girl, who twice more lost consciousness, and twice more was awakened to the drenching of cold water. And then, as she scarcely understood, hanging half conscious in the fires of her pain, she heard him say, "Cut her down,"
The binding fiber was removed from her wrists but her hands, that she might not tear at her brands, were snapped behind her back in slave bracelets. Then, by the hair, she stumbling, scarcely able to stand, he dragged her to the small, square iron box which sat near the whipping pole, and thrust her within. Crouching inside the box, I saw the door shut, and heard the two heavy, flat bolts sliding into place. I then heard the click of two padlocks, securing them in place.
I was locked inside. I could see a tiny slit of the outside through the aperture in the iron door, about a half an inch in height and seven inches in width. There was a somewhat larger opening at the foot of the door, about two inches in height and a foot wide. The box itself was square, with dimensions of perhaps one yard square. It was hot, and dark.
I remembered that a slave girl, on my first day in the camp of Rask of Treve, had warned me, that if I lied or stole, I would be beaten and put in the slave box.
I moaned and fell to my side, my knees drawn up under my chin, my hands braceleted behind me. My thigh burned terribly, from the branding, and my back and the back of my legs still screamed from the cruel flames of the leather lash. Elinor Brinton, of Park Avenue, had been branded as a liar, a thief and a traitress, and a bold tarnsman, from a distant world, her master, had put into her flesh, insolently, the mark of his own city. The girl in the slave box was under no delusion as to who it was who owned her. He had collared her, and, with a hot iron, had placed in her flesh his brand.
In the slave box, she fell unconscious. But that night, cold, she awakened, still in pain. Outside, she heard the sounds of pleasure and feasting, that celebration called in honor of the capturing of two young girls, who had fled from undesired companionships, which had been arranged by their parents.
I remained in the slave box. The door was opened, when I was braceleted, only to feed and water me. I was not allowed to stretch my body. On the fifth day the bracelets were removed, but I was kept in the box. My brands had now healed. But the box itself, its heat, its darkness, its tiny dimensions, worked their tortures in me.
In the first days, braceleted, I screamed and kicked, and begged to be released. After my bracelets were removed, and the food then, and water, would only be thrust through the hole under the tiny iron door, I pounded, and screamed, and scratched at the inside of the box. I thrust my fingers through the tiny aperture and cried out for mercy. I feared I would go insane. Ute would feed me, and fill my water pan, but she would not speak to me. Once, however, she did say to me, "You will be freed when your master wishes it, not before." Once Inge came by, to taunt me. "Rask of Treve has forgotten you," she said. Rena, too, accompanied Inge. "Yes," she laughed, "he has forgotten you. He had forgotten you!" On the tenth day, instead of the pan of bread, with the water, Ute thrust a different pan under the door. I screamed. Tiny things, with tiny sounds, moved, crawling over and about one another in it. I screamed again, and thrust it back out. It had been filled with far, loathsome green insects which, in the Ka-la-na thicket, Ute had told me were edible. Indeed, she had eaten them. "They are nourishing," she had said. I screamed hysterically, pounding at the sides of the slave box. The second day, too, I thrust the pan away, almost vomiting. I saw Ute, through the slit, take one of the insects and bite it in two, eating it. The third day, almost vomiting, I ate five of them. They, such insects, and water, were my food for the remainder of my time in the tiny slave box. I would spend hours at the slit in the door, hoping to see someone walk by. I would call to them, but they would not answer, for one does not converse with a girl in a slave box. Then I was happy, even, to see someone pass by, or birds alight on the grass and peck for seeds. I spent eighteen days in the slave box. On the night of the eighteenth day, Ute, with Inge and Rena, crouched before the box.
"Does El-no-or, the slave, wish to leave the box?" asked Ute.
On my knees in the box, my eyes at the opening, frightened, my fingers on the slit, I whispered, "yes, El-in-or, the slave, wished to leave the box." "Does El-in-or, the slave, beg to leave the box?" asked Ute.
"Yes, yes!" I wept. "El-in-or, the slave, begs to leave the box!"
"Release the slave," said Ute, to Inge and Rena.
Elinor Brinton heard the padlocks unlocked. She heard the flat, heavy bolts slide back. She saw the small door swing open.
On her hands and knees, painfully, inch by inch, she crawled from the box. She then collapsed to the grass.
"Wash the slave," said Ute, with disgust, to Inge and Rena.
I screamed with pain as Inge and Rena stretched out my body, and then, with brushes and water, almost vomiting, they cleaned me.
After Inge and Rena had finished their work, even to the cleaning of my hair, a guard, summoned, not much pleased, carried me, helpless and in pain, back to the shed for female work slaves. There Ute, with Inge and Rena, fed me simple broths, which I gratefully drank. The next day, as Ute commanded, I remained in the shed, food and water being brought to me by Inge and Rena. On the following day I was returned to work. My first task was to clean the slave box, to rid it of its filth. After I had done this, naked, and had washed my body and hair thoroughly, I was again given the tunic of a work slave. I found it a very precious garment. I worked at a variety of tasks that day. Late in the afternoon, I was sent outside, leashed again to Techne, to pick ram-berries. I did not steal berries from her, nor did I eat any.