ment was
making of me. "Would that the alternative were given me," said I to
myself: "the free choice to change these four walls for the deck over
which the waves are dancing in foamy sheets! with what a thankful heart
would I take the offer!"

The last visit of the turnkey, who came to see all safe, broke in for
a moment upon these musings; and now the double-locked door, and his
retiring footsteps, told me that no further molestation was to be
feared, and that I was, at least till daybreak, the undisturbed master
of my own reveries. I opened the window, pushed back the iron stanchion,
and walked out upon the terrace. It was a night of storm and wild
hurricane. The rain swept by in great plashes, increasing the darkness,
and mingling its hissing noise, with the breaking crash of the sea, as
it beat furiously against the rocks. The dancing, bobbing motion of the
lights on board the different craft showed what "a sea" was raging in
the bay; while, even in the city itself, the clatter of falling tiles
and chimneys told the violence of the gale. I stood upon the terrace;
and as the rain penetrated my frail garment, and the wind wafted my wet
hair across my cheeks, I felt a sense of ecstasy that nothing in all my
previous life had ever equalled. It was the sensation of freedom; it
was the burst of delight with which the captive welcomes the long-lost
liberty. "Better this," thought I, "than the snuggest chamber that ever
called itself a prison."

It was past the hour when any further visit from the turnkey might
be expected. Already the outer door of my chamber had been locked and
barred with all that scrupulous attention to noise and clank that
are supposed only essential in a melodrama. The sentry had just been
relieved on the esplanade beneath the terrace, so that I might consider
myself disencumbered from all fear of interruption in any quarter. I sat
down upon the parapet, and peered into the dark depth below me, where
the hazy glimmer of the sentry's lamp served to mark the height. At
first it seemed a terrific drop; but after a while I began to satisfy
myself that the darkness contributed to this effect; and as my sight
grew more accustomed to the gloom, I was able to trace different
objects,--among others, the conical roof of the sentry-box, at a
distance of scarcely more than fifteen feet beneath me.

Thus far I could reach by making a rope of my bed-clothes, and attach
one end to a portion of the battlement of