r and torturer, with the hardly more humane
post of gaoler. This man, like all his fellows, had been chosen for his
physical strength, and his indifference to the sight of pain; and the
calling, which he had pursued for years, had rendered the natural
ferocity of his character abnormally brutal. He was, moreover, an
Oriental official,--a class of worthies who require more supervision to
restrain them from thieving, than do even the Chinese coolies in a gold
mine, where the precious metal winks at one in the flickering
candle-light. Needless to say, no attempt of any kind was made by the
higher State officials to control the action of the _Per-tanda_. During
the months of the year in which the river was accessible to native
crafts, he had the right to collect dues of rice and fish from all boats
approaching the coast; but, during the close season of the north-east
monsoon, no allowance of any kind was made to him for the board of the
prisoners in his charge. Under these circumstances, perhaps, he was not
greatly to blame if he perverted to his own use, and sold to all comers,
the collections which he made during the open season, so that his
household might not be without rice and raiment, during the dreary
months when the hatches were down for the monsoon. Naturally, death,
from slow and lingering starvation, was not an altogether uncommon
incident in these dens of captivity, and one of Talib's first
experiences was to witness the last agonies of a fellow prisoner in an
adjoining cage. Talib himself was fed by a girl, who had been his
sweetheart before his trouble fell upon him; and, though the pangs of
hunger could not be completely allayed by the slender doles, which she
daily saved from her own ration of rice and fish, he was not, for the
time, exposed to actual danger of death from want.

The prisoner in the cage to his left was little more than a skeleton
when Talib first entered the prison. He lay huddled up in a corner, with
his hands pressed to his empty stomach and the sharp angles of his bones
peeping through his bed-sores, motionless, miserable, but, let us hope,
only half conscious of his misery. Talib saved a small portion of his
own insufficient meal for this man, but the poor wretch was already too
far gone for any such tardy aid to avail to save him. It was with
difficulty that he could swallow the rice which Talib passed to him, in
grudging handfuls, through the bars of his cell. When at last the food,
b