"Answer!" said I, threatening him with my bayonet.
"Well—what if I was?"
"You know that it was burned down?"
"Ay—pretty well," he growled, with a laugh and an imprecation.
"How did you escape?"
"By the water."
"Of course—but by what other means?"
"I swam."
"And Bill with the broken nose?"
"Was roasted like a crab, and like a buttered crab I heard him sputtering on the burning beams above me—ugh!—d—n me—burned alive!"