Has any man who reads this tale ever faced an enemy in his bare feet?
If so, he will know that the heart of man is more in his boots than philosophers wot of.

Without them he feels lost and unprepared, and the edge gone from his spirit.
But without his clothes he is in a far worse case.

The winds of heaven play round his nakedness; every thorn and twig is his assailant, and the whole of him seems a mark for the arrows of his foes.

That stripping was the thing that brought me to my senses.

I recognized that I was to be the subject of those hellish tortures which the Indians use, the tales of which are on every Borderer's lips.
And yet I did not recognize it fully, or my courage must have left me then and there.