Almost immediately afterward there seemed to be another
explosion, not nearly so harsh, which I thought was perhaps an echo of
the first. About an hour later my cell door was unlocked, and the
gaoler, with another man holding a lantern, came in. My third loaf of
black bread was partly consumed, so I must have been in prison nine or
ten days. The gaoler took the loaf outside, and when he returned. I
asked him what had happened. He answered in a surly fashion that my
American warship had fired at the rock, and that the rock had struck
back, whereupon she sailed away, crippled."
Dorothy, who had been listening intently to this discourse, here
interrupted with:
"It was an English war-ship that fired the shell, and the Russian shot
did not come within half a mile of her."
The sailor stared at her in wide-eyed surprise.
"You see, I have been making inquiries," she explained. "Please go
on."
"I never heard that it was an English ship. The gaoler sneered at me,
and said he was going to send me after the American vessel, as I
suppose he thought it was. I feared by his taking away of the bread
that it was intended to starve me to death, and was sorry I had not
eaten more at my last meal. I lay down on the shelf of rock, and soon
fell asleep. I was awakened by the water lapping around me. The cell
was intensely still. Up to this I had always enjoyed the company of a
little brook that ran along the side of the cell farthest from the
door.
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