Brandishing the fearful and wonderful revolver--of which I have spoken in such a manner as to threaten the luckless captives with instant death, he would shriek out imprecations, curses; and foul epithets in French, German and English, until he fairly frothed at the mouth.

There were plenty of stories current in camp of his having several times given away to his rage so far as to actually shoot men down in these interviews, and still more of his knocking boys down and jumping upon them, until he inflicted injuries that soon resulted in death.

How true these rumors were I am unable to say of my own personal knowledge, since I never saw him kill any one, nor have I talked with any one who did.

There were a number of cases of this kind testified to upon his trial, but they all happened among "paroles" outside the Stockade, or among the prisoners inside after we left, so I knew nothing of them.
One of the Old Switzer's favorite ways of ending these seances was to inform the boys that he would have them shot in an hour or so, and bid them prepare for death.

After keeping them in fearful suspense for hours he would order them to be punished with the stocks, the ball-and-chain, the chain-gang, or--if his fierce mood had burned itself entirely out -- as was quite likely with a man of his shallop' brain and vacillating temper--to be simply returned to the stockade.
Nothing, I am sure, since the days of the Inquisition--or still later, since the terrible punishments visited upon the insurgents of 1848 by the Austrian aristocrats--has been so diabolical as the stocks and chain-gangs, as used by Wirz.