Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/132

126 before; and what with the heat and stench, Ts'èng began to feel feverish and ill. His head ached fiercely, his skin burnt, and his mouth was dry and parched. In his agony he called aloud for water; and though at first his cries were disregarded, his importunity prevailed with a prisoner less callous than the rest, who filled a tin mug from a tub which stood in the middle of the cell. The act of moving the water caused a fetid stench to rise from the slimy surface of the reservoir; and so foul were the contents of the mug, that, though burning with fever, Ts'èng could scarcely make up his mind to taste them. But thirsty men will swallow anything; and at last he drained the cup to its dregs, and even returned it to his benefactor with grateful thanks.

All night long he tossed about, burning with fever and tortured by delirium. His restlessness earned for him the anathemas of his fellow-prisoners, who, having been long inured to the foul atmosphere of the den, slept in comparative quiet. As daylight dawned the figures about him mixed themselves up with his delirious dreams, which, however, could add nothing to the horrors actually presented to his eye. Shocking as had been the aspect of his fellow-prisoners in the courtyard the day before, it was nothing to be compared to the condition of many of those whose weakness had prevented them from groping their way into the outer air. One group of these were huddled together at the end of the platform, whose emaciated bodies and look of fierce agony told only too plainly that they were starving. One of their number had already been released from his tortures by death; and the rats, more conscious of the fact than the jailers, were gnawing at the only fleshy parts of his skeleton-like form. A like fate was the only portal of escape left to those about him, and eagerly they desired to meet it. Ever and anon sleep relieved Ts'èng's eyes from the contemplation of these horrors, and then in his dreams, as though by a law of contraries, he wandered in the asphodel meadows of Elysium, surrounded by every object calculated to gratify the imagination and delight the senses. The transition from these visions to a perception of his actual surroundings was sharp and bitter. In moments of reason he sought for the means of escape from the terrors of his present cell. He knew enough of prisons to know that it was in the power of the turnkeys to mitigate the sufferings of their charges, and he knew that money was the key to open the door of their sympathies. He remembered that when arrested he had some ten or twelve ounces of silver in his pocket, and he made up his mind to try the effect of these on the turnkey when he should come to open the cell in the morning. At last that happy moment arrived. The man who had turned the key on him the night before now threw open the door, and Ts'èng, in company with most of his fellow-prisoners, crawled out into the fresher air of the courtyard. As the turnkey passed through the yard, Ts'èng accosted him, and in exchange for the contents of his purse, procured a breakfast which was the feast of an epicure compared to the fare dealt out to the common herd.