Plz help Read this excerpt The First Men in the Moon.

For my own part a vivid dream has come to my help, and I see, almost as plainly as though I had seen it in actual fact, a blue-lit shadowy disheveled Cavor struggling in the grip of these insect Selenites, struggling ever more desperately and hopelessly as they press upon him, shouting, expostulating, perhaps even at last fighting, and being forced backwards step by step out of all speech or sign of his fellows, for evermore into the Unknown—into the dark, into that silence that has no end….
Which phrase in the passage above helps the reader infer the meaning of the bold word, expostulating?

shadowy discheveled Cavor
out of all speech or sign of his fellows
shouting...perhaps even at last fighting
dark . . . silence that has no end

Isaw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which ! had escaped. another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more and the death just avoided was of that very character which i had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the inquisition. to the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. i had been reserved for the latter. by long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until i trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me. which torture does the passage above reference? a. being eaten alive by rats b.being sliced open by a giant blade c.being killed by falling into a hole d. being burned alive