Thus years went on and I was grown from boy to man, and that no weak one either:  for though they gave us but scant food and bad, the air was fresh and strong, because Ymeguen was meant for palace as well as fortress, and they chose a healthful site.  And by degrees the moats were dug, and ramparts built, and stone by stone the castle rose till ’twas near the finish, and so our labour was not wanted.  Every day squads of our fellow-prisoners marched away, and my gang was left till nearly last, being engaged in making good a culvert that heavy rains had broken down.

It was in the tenth year of our captivity, and in the twenty-sixth of my age, that one morning instead of the guard marching us to work, they handed us over to a party of mounted soldiers, from whose matchlocks and long whips I knew that we were going to leave Ymeguen.  Before we left, another gang joined us, and how my heart went out when I saw Elzevir among them!  It was two years or more since we had met even to pass a greeting, for I worked outside the fortress and he on the great tower inside, and I took note his hair was whiter and a sadder look upon his face.  And as for the cross-pall on his cheek, I never thought of it at all, for we were all so well used to the mark, that if one bore it not stamped upon his face we should have stared at him as on a man born with but one eye.  But though his look was sad, yet Elzevir had a kind smile and hearty greeting for me as he passed, and on the march, when they served out our food, we got a chance to speak a word or two together.  Yet how could we find room for much gladness, for even the pleasure of meeting was marred because we were forced thus to take note, as it were, of each other’s misery, and to know that the one had nothing for his old age but to break in prison, and the other nothing but the prison to eat away the strength of his prime.

Before long, all knew whither we were bound, for it leaked out we were to march to the Hague and thence to Scheveningen, to take ship to the settlements of Java, where they use transported felons on the sugar farms.  Was this the end of young hopes and lofty aims—­to live and die a slave in the Dutch plantations?  Hopes of Grace, hopes of seeing Moonfleet again, were dead long long ago; and now was there to be no hope of liberty, or even wholesome air, this side the grave, but only burning sun and steaming swamps, and the crack of the slave-driver’s whip till the end came?  Could it be so?  Could it be so?  And yet what help was there, or what release?  Had I not watched ten years for any gleam or loophole of relief, and never found it?  If we were shut in cells or dungeons in the deepest rock we might have schemed escape, but here in the open, fettered up in-droves, what could we do?  They were bitter thoughts enough that filled my heart as I trudged along the rough roads, fettered by my wrist to the long bar; and seeing Elzevir’s white hair and bowed shoulders trudging in front of me, remembered