“Och hone!” groaned Teddy, looking round at his companions, as he sat on a stone seat, the picture of despair: “To be kilt is a trifle; to fight is a pleasure; to be hanged is only a little trying to the narves. But to be shut up in a stone box in a furrin land—”
Words failed him here, but another groan told eloquently of the bitterness of the spirit within.
“We must just try to be as cheery as we can, mates,” said John Potter. “The Lord can deliver us out o’ worse trouble than this if He sees fit.”
“Oh, it’s all very well for you to talk like that,” growled Isaac Dorkin, “but I don’t believe the Almighty is goin’ to pull down stone walls and iron gates to set us free, an’ you know that we haven’t a friend in all France to help us.”
“I don’t know that, Isaac. It certainly seems very unlikely that any one should start up to befriend us here, but with God all things are possible. At the worst, I know that if we are to remain here, it’s His will that we should.”
“Humph! I wish ye much comfort o’ the thought: it doesn’t give much to me,” remarked Stobbs.
Here, Mr Franks, who had hitherto sat in sad silence, brightened up, and said, “Well, well, lads, don’t let us make things worse by disputing. Surely each man is entitled to draw comfort from any source he chooses. For my part, I agree with John Potter, in this at all events,—that we should try to be as cheery as we can, and make the best of it.”
“Hear, hear!” exclaimed the others. Acting on this advice, they soon began to feel a little less miserable. They had straw to sleep on, and were allowed very poor fare; but there was a sufficiency of it. The first night passed, and the second day; after which another fit of despair seized some of the party. Then John Potter managed to cheer them up a bit, and as he never went about without a small Testament in his pocket, he was able to lighten the time by reading portions of it aloud. After that they took to relating their “lives and adventures” to each other, and then the inventive spirits among them took to “spinning long-winded yarns.” Thus a couple of weeks passed away, during which these unfortunate prisoners of war went through every stage of feeling between hope and despair over and over again.
During one of his despairing moods, Teddy Maroon declared that he had now given up all hope, and that the first chance he got, he would kill himself, for he was quite certain that nobody would ever be able to find out where they were, much less “get them out of that fig.”
But Teddy was wrong, as the sequel will show.