316 SOME ACCOUNT OF A CAPTIVITY. 



two or three thousand English prisoners were confined ; but we were 

 lodged for the night in the town gaol. Arras being a city, and having 

 a prefect, before whom the papers directing our removal to Cambray 

 were to be inspected, we were allowed a day's halt ; and, during this 

 welcome period of rest, some officials belonging to the .English depot 

 came to our prison, and furnished us with a small sum of money. To 

 the captain and mate they gave twenty-five francs each ; but to the rest, 

 myself amongst the number, they gave fifty sous (about two shillings 

 and a penny) each. I stood boldly upon my rank as a passenger, but, 

 alas ! without effect ; I could not obtain a single sou beyond the others. 

 Having received much benefit from a day's rest and a comfortable 

 meal, we were next morning marched forward towards Doulens, a 

 distance of twenty-four miles. On entering the prison-yard, the 

 gaoler opened a large gate, which presented to us a flight of some twenty 

 or thirty steps divided about halfway down by a heavy iron grating. 

 Our captain and mate actually shuddered, they begged and prayed, by 

 signs, that they might not be consigned to this dungeon, which it 

 literally was ; but the gaoler was not to be moved he ordered : us all 

 down in no very measured terms, and lifted his huge bundle of keys 

 as if to enforce his command. The captain, at length, recollecting 

 that he had some money about him, displayed it, and offered to pay 

 for a bed ; the mate followed his example, and, though neither could 

 speak a single word of French, the language they used was perfectly 

 intelligible to the gaolor, who took them off to his own house, while 

 one of his turnkeys drove us down the steps into our dungeon ; and, 

 certainly, a more horrid receptacle I never witnessed. It was a 

 vaulted cave ; in one corner was a heap of straw, into which our poor 

 fellows gladly threw themselves ; but the first who did so recoiled more 

 quickly than he advanced : he was assailed with a hollow groan. On 

 turning over the straw, we found a miserable human being beneath it. 

 He presented a most wretched appearance, and seemed fast ap- 

 proaching to that " bourn from which no traveller returns." We 

 found he was a Fleming, a conscript ; and he gave us to understand 

 that, having deserted, he had been arrested, heavily ironed, and 

 marched back on his way to join his regiment. Having been attacked 

 by illness, he was thurst into the dungeon of Doulens, where he had 

 lain several days without medical attendance, or any other suste- 

 nance save the prison allowance, which, in his case, was bread and 

 water once a day. The poor fellow appeared to be heartily tired of 

 life; the only tie that bound him to it being a desire to see a poor 

 widowed mother, whose only support he had been up to the period 

 of his being drawn as a conscprit He had his wish ; he breathed 

 his last in the course of that night without a sigh. On turning over 

 the straw, next morning, we found him a cold and livid corpse. 

 <f There the prisoner rested he heard not the voice of the op- 

 pressor." 



As soon as it was light a turnkey came down with a bottle of 

 brandy, which he tendered to us at one sou the petit goute. This we 

 declined, though certainly not for want of will as far as I was con- 

 cerned ; the fact was, that we could not afford it. But as we did not 

 have that, they took care that we should have little else, a bucket of 



