Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/182

 and I began to eat something. I crumbled a small loaf of bread into water, made porridge of it by boiling, and eat it.

As time went on I began to be much better in health, and when I imagined that it was all over, my dear companion, Mr. Chaplain, fell sick of a similar disease, while I, feeling no lice or insects any more, was sleeping and resting as pleasantly on the bare ground, after my illness, as on the best made bed, so that I had no need to use any provocatives to sleep. In this pleasant slumber the chaplain woke me, and urged me to go with him and help to carry the chain. And I went once, ten times, twenty times; but at last I got so sick of going with him that I meted out an equal measure to him, and called him a confounded silly parson, alleging that I had not tormented him before with going so much as he tormented me now; till at last we should both have been unable to bear it any longer, but must have paid for it with our lives.

The previous prisoners at length returned from rowing on board the vessels of war, and came into the gaol amongst us. Learning that we had a priest amongst us, they treated him very reverentially. Seeing him tormented by illness, all the artizans gave in a written petition to the pasha in command of the guard, and besought that the priest might be released from chains, till he recovered, engaging, on his behalf, that he should not escape. The pasha listened to their request, and ordered him to be released, and had me fettered by both feet to the chain, which I carried twice as willingly by myself as with a partner. When, by the grace of God, I got well again, without any kind of medicine, and my