'And you were sentenced to pass two years in chains?'
'Two years, Effendi.'
'Heavens,' thought I, 'should such be my sentence, what will become of Callum Dhu, and what will be the fate of my commission, which I value as my own life!'
CHAPTER LI.
DREAMS AND LONGINGS.
'If I were cast into a deep pit,' saith the quaint Hobbes, 'and the devil put down his cloven-foot, I would take hold thereof, to be drawn out by it.'
This is an apt, but somewhat fallacious application of the mode of working ascribed, with what truth I say not, to the Jesuits, viz., that we may do evil if good should come of it; and of the system upheld by the philosopher of Malmesbury, 'that it is lawful to make use of an ill instrument to do ourselves good.'
Callum and I, though sunk in dejection, dispirited, and exasperated, and feeling ourselves fitted to attempt or encounter anything desperate to achieve our liberty, had scarcely reached the climax referred to by the learned Hobbes. I thought of bribery; but my foster-brother, though poor as a cadger, was proud as a king, and with some scorn rejected my proposal to tamper with our not over-scrupulous Turkish guards and turnkeys.
These officials (as Achmet Effendi informed me), by the connivance of the governor and his subalterns, could favour or permit the escape of the worst malefactor committed to their care, if there were friends without, who were ready to pay down the requisite number of piastres, on receipt of which their names would at once be struck off the books of the Bagnio as dead.
'Suppose cholera should break out here?' said I, one day, when almost suffocated by the overpowering malaria of the prison.