428 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. CHAP. XV. “And the eighteen appointed to die, as they sat on the ground surrounded by the soldiers, sang the 137th hymn*: * When I shall die, and leave my friends, When they shall weep for me, When departed has my life, Then I shall be happy.’ “ When that hymn was finished, they sang the 154th: — ‘ When I shall behold Him rejoicing in the heavens,’ &c. “And when the sentences were all pronounced, and the officer was about to return to the chief authorities, the four sentenced to he burned requested him to ask that they might be killed first, and then burned. But they were burned alive. “ When the officer was gone, they took those eighteen away to put them to death. The fourteen they tied by the hands and the feet to long poles, and carried on men’s shoulders. And these brethren prayed, and spoke to the people, as they were being carried along. And some who beheld them, said that their faces were like the faces of angels. And when they came to the top of Nampaminarina they cast them down, and their bodies were afterwards dragged to the other end of the capital, to be burned with the bodies of those who were burned alive. “And as they took the four that were to be burned alive to the place of execution, these Christians sang the 90th hymn, beginning, ‘ Wlien our hearts are troubled,’ each verse ending with, * Then remember us.’ Thus they sang on the road. And when they came to Faravohitra, there they burned them, fixed betwixt split spars. And there was a rainbow in the • The numbers refer to the collection of printed hymns in the native lan guage. The translation is verbal and literal, not a metrical rendering of the meaning.