An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled; but an armoury.
With a fierce standard taken from the Turks, drooping in the dull
air of its cage. Rich suits of mail worn by great warriors were
hoarded there; crossbows and bolts; quivers full of arrows; spears;
swords, daggers, maces, shields, and heavy-headed axes. Plates of
wrought steel and iron, to make the gallant horse a monster cased
in metal scales; and one spring-weapon (easy to be carried in the
breast) designed to do its office noiselessly, and made for
shooting men with poisoned darts.
One press or case I saw, full of accursed instruments of torture
horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind and crush men's
bones, and tear and twist them with the torment of a thousand
deaths. Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces:
made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of living
sufferers; and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil,
where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease, and
listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions
of the wretch within. There was that grim resemblance in them to
the human shape--they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained
and cramped--that it was difficult to think them empty; and
terrible distortions lingering within them, seemed to follow me,
when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or
public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees.
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