“A prisoner?—a slave?” asked the midshipman anxiously.
“A prisoner, yes. A slave, yes—a mummified man; a dead thing with life enough to work, but not yet quite a brute, more’s the pity, for then I should not care! But here I have been for twelve years—long, long years! It has seemed to me an eternity.”
“It is a long time to be a slave. God help you, poor man!” exclaimed Foster.
“You will have to offer that prayer for yourself, young man,” returned the other; “you will need help more than I. At first we are fools, but time makes us wise. It even teaches Englishmen that they are not unconquerable.”
The man spoke pointedly and in a harsh sarcastic tone which tended to check Foster’s new-born compassion; nevertheless, he continued to address his fellow-sufferer in a sympathetic spirit.
“You are not an Englishman, I think,” he said, “though you speak our language well.”
“No, I am French, but my wife is English.”
“Your wife! Is she here also?”
“Thank God—no,” replied the Frenchman, with a sudden burst of seriousness which was evidently genuine. “She is in England, trying to make up the sum of my ransom. But she will never do it. She is poor. She has her daughter to provide for besides herself, and we have no friends. No, I have hoped for twelve years, and hope is now dead—nearly dead.”
The overwhelming thoughts that this information raised in Foster’s mind rendered him silent for a few minutes. The idea of the poor wife in England, toiling for twelve years almost hopelessly to ransom her husband, filled his susceptible heart with pity. Then the thought of his mother and Minnie—who were also poor—toiling for years to procure his ransom, filled him with oppressive dread. To throw the depressing subject off his mind, he asked how the Frenchman had guessed that he was an Englishman before he had heard him speak.