bones and muscles were stiff and pained
from lying on a stone floor, it was some time before he could make out
where he was, or recall the events of the last few days. The first
thing that revived his sluggish memory was the scuttling away, in
anxious haste, of a scorpion that had sought and found comfortable
quarters during the night under the lee of his right leg. Starting up,
he crushed the reptile with his foot.

"You will get used to that," said a quietly sarcastic voice with a
slightly foreign accent, close to him.

The speaker was a middle-aged man with grey hair, hollow cheeks, and
deep sunken eyes.

"They trouble us a little at first," he continued, "but, as I have said,
we get used to them. It is long since I cared for scorpions."

"Have you, then, been long here?" asked Foster.

"Yes. Twelve years."

"A prisoner?--a slave?" asked the midshipman anxiously.

"A prisoner, yes. A slave, yes--a mummified man; a dead thing with life
enough to work, but not yet quite a brute, more's the pity, for then I
should not care! But here I have been for twelve years--long, long
years! It has seemed to me an eternity."

"It _is_ a long time to be a slave. God help you, poor man!" exclaimed
Foster.

"You will have to offer that prayer for yourself, young man," returned
the other; "you will need help more than I. At first we are fools, but
time makes us wise. It even teaches Englishmen that they are not
unconquerable."

The man spoke pointedly and in a harsh sarcastic tone which tended to
check Foster's new-born compassion; nevertheless, he continued to
address his fellow-sufferer in a sympathetic spirit.

"You are not an Englishman, I think," he said, "though you speak our
language well."

"No, I am French, but my wife is English."

"Your wife! Is she here also?"

"Thank God--no," replied the Frenchman, with a sudden burst of
seriousness which was evidently genuine. "She is in England, trying to
make up the sum of my ransom. But she will never do it. She is poor.
She has her daughter to provide for besides herself, and we have no
friends. No, I have hoped for twelve years, and hope is now dead--
nearly dead."

The overwhelming thoughts that this information raised in Foster's mind
rendered him silent for a few minutes. The idea of the poor wife in
England, toiling for twelve years almost hopelessly to ransom her
husband, filled his susceptible heart with pity. Then the thought of
his mothe