१८५७ का स्वातन्त्र्य समर (वीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर - अंग्रेजों द्वारा छपने से पूर्व प्रतिबन्धित महाग्रन्थ)

THE ERUPTION
thenceforth, the trees themselves were turned into scaffolds.
But if only one man were to be hanged on each tree, what
has God given so many branches to a tree for ? So,
“ natives ” were left hanging on every branch, with their
necks tightly roped to them. This “ military duty ” and
this Christian mission went on incessantly night and day.
No wonder the brave English got tired of it. So the
necessary seriousness in this religious and noble duty was
mixed with a little humour for the sake of amusement. The
rude manner of catching hold of peasants and hanging
them on the trees was altered to suit the taste of art.
They were first made to mount on elephants. Then the
elephants were taken near a high branch, and after the
necks were tied tightly to it, the elephants would be
moved away.⁷ Still, when the elephants were gone, the
countless unshapely corpses used to hang on the branches
and the English passers-by were bored with the unchang-
ing monotony of the scene. Therefore, when “natives” were
hanged, instead of being hanged straight, they were made
into all sorts of figures. Some were killed in the shape
of the English figure “8”, and some in the shape of “9”!⁸
But in spite of these various efforts in different directions,
there were still hundreds of thousands of ‘ black ’ men
living ! Now, to hang all these would require an amount
of rope that could not easily be had ! The “ civilised ”
and “ Christian ” nation of England was landed in this
unthought-of difficulty. By the grace of their God Him-
self, they hit upon a new plan, and the first experiment
was so successful that, thenceforth, hanging was aban-
7. Narrative, page 69.
8. “ Volunteer hanging parties went out into the districts and
amateur executioners were not wanting to the occasion. One gentle-
man boasted of the numbers he had finished off quite “ in an artistic
manner,” with mango trees for gibbets and elephants as drops, the
victims of this wild justice being strung up, as though for pastime,
in “ the form of a figure of eight.” ”—Kaye and Malleson's History
of the Indian Mutiny, Vol. II, page 177.
190