When I came to a consciousness of myself again, the first thing of

which I laid hold with my mind as a means whereby to pull my

recollections back to my former cognisance of matters was a broad

shaft of sunlight streaming in through the west window of the prison

in Jamestown. And all this sunbeam was horribly barred like the body

of a wasp by the iron grating of the window, and had a fierce sting

of heat in it, for it was warm though only May, and I was in a high

fever by reason of my wounds. And another thing which served to hale

me back to acquaintance with my fixed estate of life was a great

swarm of flies which had entered at that same window, and were

grievously tormenting me, and I was too weak to disperse them. All

my wounds were dressed and bandaged and I was laid comfortably

enough upon a pallet, but I was all alone except for the flies which

settled upon me blackly with such an insistence of buzzing that that

minor grievance seemed verily the greatest in the world, and for the

time all else was forgot.

For some little time I did not think of Mary Cavendish, so hedged

about was I as to my freedom of thought and love by my physical

ills, for verily after a man has been out of consciousness with a

wound, it is his body which first struggles back to existence, and

his heart and soul have to follow as they may.

So I lay there knowing naught except the weary pain of my wounds,

and that sense of stiffness which forbade me to move, and the

fretful heat of that fierce west sunbeam, and the buzzing swarm of

flies, for some little time before the memory of it all came to me.

Then indeed, though with great pain, I raised myself upon my elbow,

and peered about my cell, and called aloud for some one to come,

thinking some one must be within hearing, for the sounds of life

were all about me: the tramp of horses on the road outside, the even

fall of a workman's hammer, the sweet husky carol of a slave's song,

and the laughter of children at play.

So I shouted and waited and shouted again, and no one came. There

was in my cell not much beside my pallet, except a little stand

which looked like one from Drake Hill, and on the stand was a china

dish like one which I had often seen at Drake Hill, with some mess

therein, what, I knew not, and a bottle of wine and some medicine

vials and glasses. I was not ironed, and, indeed, there was no need

of that, since I could not have moved.




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