Last Of All Follows A
Herald On Horseback, Carrying A Yellow Banner Inscribed "By Imperial
Decree," An Indispensable Adjunct On Such Occasions, As Without It The
County Ruler Would Not Be Justified In Commanding The Executioner To
Give The Death Stroke.
This ruler or his deputy sits at a table covered
with a red cloth, and on being told that all the preliminaries have
been complied with, gives the word for execution.
The criminals, who
have been unceremoniously pitched out of the dust baskets into the mud
or gore or dust of the execution ground, kneel down in a row or rows,
and the executioner with a scimitar strikes off head after head, each
with a single stroke, an assistant attending to hand him a fresh sword
as soon as the first becomes blunt. It is said that Chinese criminals
usually meet their doom with extreme apathy, but occasionally they
yield to extreme terror, and howl at the top of their voices, "Save
life! Save life!" As soon as the heads have fallen, some coolies of a
pariah class take up the trunks and put them into wooden shells, in
which they are eventually buried in a cemetery outside one of the city
gates, called "The trench for the bones of ten thousand men." It is not
an uncommon thing, under ordinary circumstances, for fifteen, twenty,
or thirty-five wretches to suffer the penalty of death in this spot;
and this number swells to very large dimensions at a jail delivery, or
during a rebellion, or when the crews of pirates are captured in the
act of piracy.
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