Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/212

 knowledge; he also had the prison cleaned out, and some weeks afterwards fumigated with laurel-leaves. They, nevertheless, gave us snails and tortoises, which we boiled and ate with a good appetite. Neither did they do us any harm, for we had fortified our stomachs with hunger, and digested everything well, with the exception of that nasty cat-fish.

At that time there was a great plague in Thrace, and in almost all the islands beyond sea, so that in Constantinople itself, and its suburbs, about 80,000 people died in three months. In the town around our tower, which is called Genyhyssar, that is, New Castle, many people, and some of our guards, perished. There was great weeping and lamentation. The Turks, learning that there was a surgeon amongst us, sent and requested him to be let out of the tower. He had medicines prepared for them, and let blood by the middle vein of the arm, for he had still kept a lancet or so. Sometimes from twenty to thirty persons of both sexes came to him, and could not sufficiently wonder that our way of blood-letting caused so little pain; for the Turks pierce the vein with an Italian knife, and make a large hole, which cannot be done without considerable pain. And the surgeon began to be the best off amongst us, for they gave him plenty to eat, and sometimes sent him money, and, above all, he went into the dear open air and light of day, and refreshed himself,—a thing which we poor creatures could not enjoy, but must remain, day and night, in that dark and stinking tower.

When the bad weather changed, Synan Pasha won a victory in Hungary with the Turkish army. The Turks, therefore, fired thrice from all their artillery, both in