the family be fruitful and the year give many slaves! Women! O, women, bring your rice-pounders!"
" 'These words were shouted and yelled by the warriors, but promptly taken up by the whole crowd, which, wild with excitement, began to stamp and dance with gyratory motion about the spot occupied by the executioner and his assistants.
" 'Several scores of women had rushed off to the town at the first words, and were now streaming back, each one armed with her rice-pounder, of hard, heavy wood, about three inches in diameter and six feet long, shod with iron at the lower end. As they came up they were speedily arranged in rows round the pits, and at a given cry from the warriors and the crowd of "Now, O women, pound the sacred rice to feed the gods!" they commenced pounding away with their formidable rammers at the wretched creatures below.
" 'The piercing shrieks that immediately rent the air soon ceased, and soon, save for a low groan or two, no sound rose from the blood-stained mortars except the monotonous beat-beat of the horrid pestles.
" 'But while the women pounded, the people and the executioners yelled and danced till the excitement attained a frantic pitch. Then, suddenly closing in, the crowd seized the great pillars lying on the ground, hoisted them up by main force of arm, and, planting each one in the centre of the gory mass below, filled in the loose earth and stones about them.
" 'Not till the earth was packed hard round the pillars and level with the surface of the surrounding soil did the women cease their ghastly labour. Then they stopped, exhausted, and rolled about, many of them apparently afflicted with a species of epileptic frenzy.
