in--which had been carried by the men--a quantity of
plantains, and some fowls. Therefore, the party that were to remain
would be well provided.

Moreover, in collecting the wood a score of snakes had been killed.
Some of these and a chicken had been cooking while they were at
work and, as soon as this was eaten, they started for the town.
When they came within a mile of it, Stanley entered a plantation of
fruit trees, and Meinik and the four men went on.

They returned, in two hours, with the news that a party of ten men
had arrived in the town, on the previous day, with two prisoners.
One, a coloured man, had been able to walk. The other, a white man,
had been carried in on a litter. They had both been lodged in the
jail.

By this time, the conduct of the English towards the natives, at
Rangoon and the territory they occupied, had had one good effect.
Signally as they had been defeated by them, the Burmese had lost
their individual hatred of the strangers. They knew that their
wounded and prisoners always received kind treatment at their hands
and, although the court of Ava remained as arrogant and bigoted as
ever, the people in lower Burma had learned to respect their
invaders, and the few prisoners they had taken received much better
treatment than those who had been captured at the commencement of
the war.

As soon as it was dusk, Stanley went with Meinik into the town. It
was a place of considerable size, with buildings at least equal to
those at Prome. Toungoo had formed part of the kingdom of Pegu,
before it had been subdued by the Burmese. The peculiar and
characteristic facial outline of the latter was, here, much less
strongly marked and, in many cases, entirely absent; so Stanley
felt that, even in daylight, he would pass without attracting any
attention.

The prison was surrounded by a strong and high bamboo fence, and in
the space inclosed by this were eight or ten dwellings of the usual
wooden construction. A dozen armed men were seated by a fire in the
yard, and two sentries were carelessly leaning against the gate.

"There should be no difficulty in getting in there with two rope
ladders--one to climb up with, and one to drop on the other side,"
Stanley said. "You may be sure that most of the guard go to sleep,
at night. The first thing to ascertain is which house the prisoners
are kept in and, in the second place, how my cousin is going on. We
can do nothing until he is able to walk for a shor