As we passed through the guard-room, Lieutenant Saint Croix summoned a file of soldiers, who promptly placed themselves one on each side of me; and in this humiliating manner I was conducted to the prison from which, in a few short hours, I was to go to my grave.
On leaving the guard-room, we crossed the small open court, and passed under the archway into the passage which led through to the barrack-yard.
Midway through the passage we came to a halt before a low door of solid oak, which was opened with the aid of a ponderous key, when a steep narrow stairway of stone lay before us. It wound upwards, corkscrew fashion, in the thickness of the wall, and, ascending it, we eventually reached a stone landing or short passage, very dimly lighted by two narrow unglazed windows, one at each end. There were two doors on each side of this passage, one of which the young officer unlocked and flung open, motioning me to enter. I did so, seeing that I had no choice in the matter; the door slammed heavily to, the massive bolts grated harshly back into their places, and I was alone.
It was so dark that, until my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I could see nothing except a narrow opening in the wall, far above my head, which admitted all the light and air the architect had considered necessary for the miserable occupants of the dungeon.
I shut my eyes, and clasped my hands tightly over them, keeping them so for about five minutes; and when I opened them again, I was able to see with tolerable distinctness.
I then found that I had been thrust into a chamber about ten feet square and as many feet high, the walls of which were of massive masonry. A stone bench ran along one side of the wall, and that was all; furniture of any kind there was absolutely none. The aperture in the wall, which I have already mentioned, was close up under the stone ceiling of the cell, and measured about two feet long and six inches wide. So thick was the wall in which this was pierced, that standing back against the opposite wall I was unable to see the sky out through it. I felt all round the walls of my prison. They were perfectly smooth, and slimy with the accumulated damp of centuries. I then examined the door. It was of oak or some other hard wood, and evidently very thick, from the dead sound which my knuckles made when I rapped upon it. It was quite useless, then, to think of escape. So strong, indeed, was the place, that they had not thought it worth while to search me, being no doubt convinced that it would be impossible for me to break out with any tools or weapons I might happen to have in my possession. I had a stout knife in my pocket; but five minutes’ work with it on the door satisfied me that it would be a labour of days, instead of the few hours which remained to me, to carve my way out with such an instrument.
Nothing then remained but to devote those few remaining hours to the work of preparation for my inevitable fate.
I flung myself down upon the rough stone bench, and let my thoughts wander far away to my dear old Hampshire home, and to the loved ones there whose hearts the vague tidings of my uncertain fate would go far to break. They would of course hear, through Captain Hood, of the mad venture upon which I had embarked; and would doubtless also be furnished with full details of my doings up to the moment when I disappeared from Bob’s lingering gaze into the darkness of the murky night. And from that moment all further trace of me would be lost, unless indeed Bastia should eventually fall into the hands of the British; and even then it was improbable that, in the general bustle and excitement, anyone would remember to make inquiries about me. And so the years would drag slowly on; and while my body lay mouldering in an obscure and unmarked grave, those loved ones would be hoping against hope for tidings of me, until, under the long-continued and cruel strain, their hearts would slowly but surely break.
The subject was of too painful a character to be longer dwelt upon; and I turned from it to seek in my hour of need the support and consolation of religion. I recalled to mind some of those sublime passages, so lavishly scattered through the pages of the “Book of Books,” each solemn word breathing comfort, hope, and promise; but the words chased each other idly through my throbbing brain, which refused to grasp their meaning; turning aside instead to interest itself in all manner of idle fancies. Then I strove to quell the tumult of my mind by earnest prayer; but it was of no use; words came readily enough to my dry and fevered lips; but they were words only, not aspirations of the soul. And so at length I had to abandon my useless efforts and allow my thoughts to be dragged away a helpless prey to every mad fancy born of my whirling brain. And all the while I was conscious that the sands in the hour-glass of my life were fast running out, and that the precious moments which were passing so swiftly away bore with them the possibilities of an eternity of bliss or an eternity of woe for me beyond the great Boundary Line which I was so soon to cross.
And thus the hours sped swiftly on, until a thin shaft of golden light streamed in through the narrow opening above my head, and, striking on the opposite wall, gleamed there for a few minutes in radiant and dazzling beauty, passing obliquely upward the while until it grew narrower and more narrow, dwindled down to the thinness of a thread, and finally vanished. I had witnessed the last gleam of earthly sunlight I was ever to see.