“I can do that as I stand here,” and Simon commenced, stopping when he had ended with eighteen, and beginning over again.
“Is there one missing?” he asked, as if doubting the evidence of his own senses.
Well, we puzzled over that matter half an hour or more, examining every portion of the brig without allowing the prisoners to understand what we were about, and it was impossible to arrive at any other conclusion.
There were but eighteen men in the brig, and yet the prison remained as it ever had been, so secure that anything larger than a cat could not have gotten out.
Then we went aft a short distance, to discuss the matter, and Simon repeated again and again this question:
“What could it advantage a man to escape from the brig, in case an opportunity presented itself? By so doing he would shut himself off from taking exercise in the open air once a day, and stand a chance of getting mighty hungry.”
“Now I am positive that the fellow to whom I spoke took two allowances.”
“How can it avail the man who is free, if there be one outside? With a guard kept night and day, nothing could be passed out from the brig.”
I failed to answer his question, yet the fact remained that, apparently, one of the prisoners was missing, and lest we should have made a mistake in supposing nineteen had been confined in the brig, I proposed to go quietly on deck and ask some one of the men the same questions I had asked Simon.