Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 3.djvu/246

 country people coming into the square with their produce, roused me from my reverie, for I had not slept. The prison was surrounded by all ages and all classes, to get a sight of the English murderer; and the light and the air were stopped out of each window by human faces pressed against the bars. I was gazed at as a wild beast; and the children, as they sat on their mothers' shoulders to look at me, received a moral lesson and a warning at my expense.

As a tiger, in his cage, wearies the eye by incessantly walking and turning, so I paced my den; and if I could have reached one of the impertinent gazers, through the slanting aperture and three foot wall, I should have throttled him. "All these people," said I, "and thousands more, will witness my last moments on the scaffold!"

Stung with this dreadful thought, with rage I searched in my pockets for my penknife, to relieve me at once from my torments and appre-