There I passed a miserable winter. Our prison was not unlike the
_ergastulum_ at Placentia; ill-designed, damp, cold, filthy, swarming with
vermin and crowded with wretches like myself. I was despondent in my
loneliness and found harder to bear my shiverings, my fitful half-sleep in
my foul infested bunk, the horrible food, the grinding labor, the stripes
and blows and insults of the guards and overseers and the jeers of my
inhuman fellow-sufferers. This time I had no chance of becoming cook's-
helper or of easing my circumstances in any other manner. I spent the
entire winter haggard for sleep, underclad, underfed, overworked,
shivering, beaten and abused.
Conditions in that _ergastulum_ were more than amazing. It was so utterly
mismanaged that, in fact, very little effective work was done, though the
inmates were roused early, set to their tasks before they could really
see, lashed all day, given but a very brief rest at noon and released only
after dusk. Half the prisoners judiciously directed could have ground
twice as much grain. As it was, the superintendent and overseers had far
less real authority than a sort of dictator elected or selected or
tolerated by the rabble. He had a sort of senate of the six most ruffianly
of the prisoners.
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