For amusement of the court, and to appall his foes, Prince Christian of Chrisylvania had required to be built a device of the devil that came to be called, "The Box." More aptly, it might have been called "The Coffin," for it took that shape, though standing on end and bolted to the floor. By opening a door at its back, the prisoner could be entered, and, when the door closed, almost immobile.
At the box's front, at the level of man's fork, was a hole of just two inches diameter. The padding within the box was so arranged that the prisoner's body was held pressed forward, back arched, and hips thrusting. Out of hole jutted his private parts, the inner contours of the box being such that he was unable to withdraw those parts or move them to the slightest degree.
The prisoner, putting panic aside, perhaps, breathed easily, there being a current of air rising from holes in the box's base and the floor below. The prisoner, however, stood in complete darkness, unseen, except for those parts energetically thrust into the room before him—his only representation to the world outside his prison. The privileged visitors to the inner palace room looked immediately to "see" the latest prisoner, although that was but his penis, testicles, and the hair surrounding them.
It was a cruel device, withal, and of a psychological refinement, leaving the most sensitive and private parts of a prisoner entirely vulnerable and at the whim of those he could not see and scarcely hear.
Deneen had come to appreciate this. In a wild mood, one evening. After carousing about the town with companions, he declared that he would put this notorious box to the test and so experience for himself, in some small way, what prisoners must feel. There was no denying wishes of the head of the prince's personal guard and so, dismissing the remonstrance and jokes of his companions, all—both gentlemen and ladies—set off for the room, with many a jest and jeering threat.
Once there, his companions stripped him bare and inserted him into the box, so that, the door closing, he no longer heard the excited tittering of the ladies of the court or the ribald jokes of the gentlemen. Indeed, his sensations focused on the slight coolness of that one part of his body not enclosed in the box.
Deneen, a man of the fiercest bravery and valor, reported later the most terrifying sensations (and this from a man securely among friends) as, with all else in darkness, his body immobile, his every attention became focused on the parts now beyond his reach and control. These parts felt at once enormous, in being singled out and exposed, losing all proportion to the rest of his body, but also supremely vulnerable as he could neither protect himself, even by look or word, nor brace for a blow that he could not anticipate.
And yet, he stood in perfect physical comfort, his arched back supported at every point and even much of the weight taken off his feet as he stood in a frozen gesture of thrusting his hips forward.
Deneen had warned his companions against taking advantage of his position, and with much good humor they had made their pledges; but he realized, now, that he could not know who might set aside that pledge and have their way with him. Many there were in court who envied him, not least the reputation of his manhood's size and virility; among many women there was a yearning, he knew, to experience that manhood.
The strange apprehension, near panic, that he felt caused him, after a few moments, to call for his release. This he did, but heard no reply from the world outside The Box. He began to imagine he had been deserted—or could it be that his voice could not be heard? Perhaps his companions, thinking it a fine jest, had gone off to continue their reveling, intending to return after Deneen had gotten a good fright? He began to sweat all over his body and to call out more loudly. Did they not realize that other visitors to the room, finding the box, would think it but the latest enemy of the prince and have their will of him? Or the palace guard, on its rounds, thinking it but a prisoner, amuse themselves?
With these imaginings, he felt his emotions escaping his legendary discipline. He thrashed his body to no avail, seeking to withdraw his dangling manhood into the box, when he heard, quite distinctly, the sound of people entering the room outside the box. In a moment, his body became rigid, braced for some unseen, unknown attack.
His companions gone, had some band of revelers come to see what misery they could inflict on the latest prisoner in The Box? Deneen ached now in every limb from the bow-string tension of every muscle. He felt his penis and testicles a huge and provocative excrescence in the outside world, dominating the room outside and all attention. He groaned inwardly. He longed from freedom of his hand to fly downward to cover himself.
At that instant, he cried out as he had not since childhood. A firm hand, he could not say if a man's or a woman's, had closed over his testicles. He suppressed yet another scream. The anonymous hand pulled his testicles downward, causing the head of his penis to emerge from its cowl of flesh, for he was uncircumcised. The pressure slowly continued and increased, so that his testicles were drawn right down, which had the effect of lengthening his already admirably long penis and exposing the head outside of the foreskin.
It was a gentle enough, but this manipulation of his privates by unknown hands caused Deneen's stomach and thighs to quiver as though with a will of their own. He could imagine, outside the box, the young royal roustabouts and their girls grinning at his poor exposed parts and deciding, among themselves, what must be done to cause the prisoner the most acute grief.
Suddenly, though, the door at his back swung open, hands took his shoulders, and he was eased out of the box by laughing, chattering friends, who assured him he had been in the box for only several minutes, none had heard his cries, and certainly they had not left the room. But to his inquiry as to who had taken hold of his testicles, caused his moments of terror, his companions replied only with a knowing laughter. Nor did Deneen even discover whether the hand that "stripped" him of the very last garment over the private meat had been man or woman.
Deneen had not forgotten this experience when, most of a year later, a rumor went round the palace that the expeditionary force to Feroe, returning from its engagements with the barbarian tribes, had brought as prisoner a huge wild man, a chieftain, black as the depths but brave and terrible in battle, who had caused many casualties before his tribe was defeated and their leader marched away in chains.