We
were glad to pass up the dusty wooden staircase, the custodian leaving
the outer door open to light us somewhat on our way; for to our eyes
the one long-wick’d, evil-smelling candle stuck in a sconce on the wall
gave an inadequate light. When we came up through the open trap in the
corner of the chamber overhead, Amelia held on to me so tightly that I
could actually feel her heart beat. I must say for my own part that I
was not surprised at her fear, for this room was even more gruesome
than that below. Here there was certainly more light, but only just
sufficient to realise the horrible surroundings of the place. The
builders of the tower had evidently intended that only they who should
gain the top should have any of the joys of light and prospect. There,
as we had noticed from below, were ranges of windows, albeit of
mediaeval smallness, but elsewhere in the tower were only a very few
narrow slits such as were habitual in places of mediaeval defence. A
few of these only lit the chamber, and these so high up in the wall
that from no part could the sky be seen through the thickness of the
walls. In racks, and leaning in disorder against the walls, were a
number of headsmen’s swords, great double-handed weapons with broad
blade and keen edge. Hard by were several blocks whereon the necks of
the victims had lain, with here and there deep notches where the steel
had bitten through the guard of flesh and shored into the wood. Round
the chamber, placed in all sorts of irregular ways, were many
implements of torture which made one’s heart ache to see—chairs full of
spikes which gave instant and excruciating pain; chairs and couches
with dull knobs whose torture was seemingly less, but which, though
slower, were equally efficacious; racks, belts, boots, gloves, collars,
all made for compressing at will; steel baskets in which the head could
be slowly crushed into a pulp if necessary; watchmen’s hooks with long
handle and knife that cut at resistance—this a speciality of the old
Nurnberg police system; and many, many other devices for man’s injury
to man. Amelia grew quite pale with the horror of the things, but
fortunately did not faint, for being a little overcome she sat down on
a torture chair, but jumped up again with a shriek, all tendency to
faint gone. We both pretended that it was the injury done to her dress
by the dust of the chair, and the rusty spikes which had upset her, and
Mr. Hutcheson acquiesced in accepting the explanation with a
kind-hearted laugh. But the central object in the whole of this chamber of horrors was the
engine known as the Iron Virgin, which stood near the centre of the
room. It was a rudely-shaped figure of a woman, something of the bell
order, or, to make a closer comparison, of the figure of Mrs. Noah in
the children’s Ark, but without that slimness of waist and perfect
_rondeur_ of hip which marks the aesthetic type of the Noah family. One
would hardly have recognised it as intended for a human figure at all
had not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude semblance of a
woman’s face. This machine was coated with rust without, and covered
with dust; a rope was fastened to a ring in the front of the figure,
about where the waist should have been, and was drawn through a pulley,
fastened on the wooden pillar which sustained the flooring above. The
custodian pulling this rope showed that a section of the front was
hinged like a door at one side; we then saw that the engine was of
considerable thickness, leaving just room enough inside for a man to be
placed. The door was of equal thickness and of great weight, for it
took the custodian all his strength, aided though he was by the
contrivance of the pulley, to open it. This weight was partly due to
the fact that the door was of manifest purpose hung so as to throw its
weight downwards, so that it might shut of its own accord when the
strain was released. The inside was honeycombed with rust—nay more, the
rust alone that comes through time would hardly have eaten so deep into
the iron walls; the rust of the cruel stains was deep indeed! It was
only, however, when we came to look at the inside of the door that the
diabolical intention was manifest to the full. Here were several long
spikes, square and massive, broad at the base and sharp at the points,
placed in such a position that when the door should close the upper
ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his heart
and vitals. The sight was too much for poor Amelia, and this time she
fainted dead off, and I had to carry her down the stairs, and place her
on a bench outside till she recovered. That she felt it to the quick
was afterwards shown by the fact that my eldest son bears to this day a
rude birthmark on his breast, which has, by family consent, been
accepted as representing the Nurnberg Virgin. When we got back to the chamber we found Hutcheson still opposite the
Iron Virgin; he had been evidently philosophising, and now gave us the
benefit of his thought in the shape of a sort of exordium. “Wall, I guess I’ve been learnin’ somethin’ here while madam has been
gettin’ over her faint. “Pears to me that we’re a long way behind the
times on our side of the big drink. We uster think out on the plains
that the Injun could give us points in tryin’ to make a man
uncomfortable; but I guess your old mediaeval law-and-order party could
raise him every time. Splinters was pretty good in his bluff on the
squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on him. The points of them spikes air sharp enough still, though even the edges
air eaten out by what uster be on them. It’d be a good thing for our
Indian section to get some specimens of this here play-toy to send
round to the Reservations jest to knock the stuffin’ out of the bucks,
and the squaws too, by showing them as how old civilisation lays over
them at their best. Guess but I’ll get in that box a minute jest to see
how it feels!”

“Oh no! no!” said Amelia. “It is too terrible!”

“Guess, ma’am, nothin’s too terrible to the explorin’ mind. I’ve been
in some queer places in my time. Spent a night inside a dead horse
while a prairie fire swept over me in Montana Territory—an’ another
time slept inside a dead buffler when the Comanches was on the war path
an’ I didn’t keer to leave my kyard on them. I’ve been two days in a
caved-in tunnel in the Billy Broncho gold mine in New Mexico, an’ was
one of the four shut up for three parts of a day in the caisson what
slid over on her side when we was settin’ the foundations of the
Buffalo Bridge. I’ve not funked an odd experience yet, an’ I don’t
propose to begin now!”

We saw that he was set on the experiment, so I said: “Well, hurry up,
old man, and get through it quick!”

“All right, General,” said he, “but I calculate we ain’t quite ready
yet. The gentlemen, my predecessors, what stood in that thar canister,
didn’t volunteer for the office—not much!