The thongs were torturing his arms and legs.
Beverley was silent, but consciousness had returned, and with it a sense of despair.

All three of the prisoners lay face upward quite unable to move, knowing full well that a terrible ordeal awaited them.
Oncle Jazon's grim humor could not be quenched, even by the galling agony of the thongs that buried themselves in the flesh, and the anticipation of torture beside which death would seem a luxury.
"Yap! Long-Hair, how's yer arm ?" he called jeeringly.

"Feels pooty good, hay ?" Long-Hair, who was not joining in the dance and song, turned when he heard these taunting words, and mistaking whence they came, went to Beverley's side and kicked him again and again.
Oncle Jazon heard the loud blows, and considered the incident a remarkably good joke.
"He, he, he!" he snickered, as soon as Long-Hair walked away again.

"I does the talkin' an' somebody else gits the thumpin'! He, he, he! I always was devilish lucky.

Them kicks was good solid jolts, wasn't they, Lieutenant?
Sounded like they was.