“I know your countrymen,” he answered, “by their bearing. Besides, you have been muttering in your sleep about ‘Mother and Minnie.’ If the latter is, as I suppose, your sweetheart—your fiancée—the sooner you get her out of your mind the better, for you will never see her more.”
Again Foster felt repelled by the harsh cynicism of the man, yet at the same time he felt strangely attracted to him, a fact which he showed more by his tones than his words when he said—
“My friend, you are not yet enrolled among the infallible prophets. Whether I shall ever again see those whom I love depends upon the will of God. But I don’t wonder that with your sad experience you should give way to despair. For myself, I will cling to the hope that God will deliver me, and I would advise you to do the same.”
“How many I have seen, who had the sanguine temperament, like yours, awakened and crushed,” returned the Frenchman. “See, there is one of them,” he added, pointing to a cell nearly opposite, in which a form was seen lying on its back, straight and motionless. “That young man was such another as you are when he first came here.”
“Is he dead?” asked the midshipman, with a look of pity.
“Yes—he died in the night while you slept. It was attending to him in his last moments that kept me awake. He was nothing to me but a fellow-slave and sufferer, but I was fond of him. He was hard to conquer, but they managed it at last, for they beat him to death.”
“Then they did not conquer him,” exclaimed Foster with a gush of indignant pity. “To beat a man to death is to murder, not to conquer. But you called him a young man. The corpse that lies there has thin grey hair and a wrinkled brow.”
“Nevertheless he was young—not more than twenty-seven—but six years of this life brought him to what you see. He might have lived longer, as I have, had he been submissive!”
Before Foster could reply, the grating of a rusty key in the door caused a movement as well as one or two sighs and groans among the slaves, for the keepers had come to summon them to work. The Frenchman rose and followed the others with a hook of sullen indifference. Most of them were without fetters, but a few strong young men wore chains and fetters more or less heavy, and Foster judged from this circumstance, as well as their expressions, that these were rebellious subjects whom it was difficult to tame.
Much to his surprise, the youth found that he was not called on to join his comrades in misfortune, but was left behind in solitude. While casting about in his mind as to what this could mean, he observed in a corner the two rolls of black bread which he had received the previous night, and which, not being hungry at the time, he had neglected. As a healthy appetite was by that time obtruding itself on his attention, he took hold of one and began to eat. It was not attractive, but, not being particular, he consumed it. He even took up the other and ate that also, after which he sighed and wished for more! As there was no more to be had, he went to the fountain in the court and washed his breakfast down with water.