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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: the payment. To this we could only repeat what we had said before:
he then proposed to abate five thousand of his last demand, assuring
us that unless we came to some agreement, there was no torment so
cruel but we should suffer it, and talked of nothing but impaling
and flaying us alive; the terror of these threatenings was much
increased by his domestics, who told us of many of his cruelties.
This is certain, that some time before, he had used some poor pagan
merchants in that manner, and had caused the executioner to begin to
flay them, when some Brahmin, touched with compassion, generously
contributed the sum demanded for their ransom. We had no reason to
hope for so much kindness, and, having nothing of our own, could
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