“Oh, aye, I hear. You mun ha’ it all your own way. What do ’e want me to be after?”
“Get up, man, and follow us,” was the answer.
“It doan’t much matter where I be; one place is as good as the other,” he answered, rising from his seat, and casting a woe-begone look round his narrow prison-house.
He was so broken down that he hardly had strength enough to follow his janitors from the cell.
They took him down a flight of steps through a yard. In this yard was a covered building fitted up with little cells, each of which contained a crank and a prisoner.
Chudley heaved a deep-drawn sigh, and passed his hands across his eyes, which were filled with tears.
The turnkeys retained him there for a few minutes to see the prisoners at work, and then conducted him to a corner of the yard in which there were two iron doors.
One of these was unlocked, and he was forcibly thrust into a low, damp cell, the walls of which were covered with damp, and which emitted a cold, earthly smell, as if it now tasted the sun and fresh air for the first time.
It was in a cell similar to the one in which he now found himself that the pirate had been confined previous to his being transferred to the one next to the cell Chudley had just left.
He sat down upon the rough stones, with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.