“A sinking cause!  Death!  Destruction!  Misery!  The ship is going down.  Leave it.”

“You are misinformed.  There is no leak in our ship,” said Jack.

Mr. Pinhorn shut his eyes and shook his head mournfully.  Then, with a wave of his hand, he pronounced the doom of the western world in one whispered word: 

“Ashes!”

For a moment his face and form were alive with exclamatory suggestion.  Then he shook his head and said: 

“Doomed!  Poor soul!  Go out in the yard with your fellow rebels.  They are taking the air.”

The yard was an opening walled in by the main structure and its two wings and a wooden fence some fifteen feet high.  There was a ragged, dirty rabble of “rebel” prisoners, among whom was Solomon Binkus, all out for an airing.  The old scout had lost flesh and color.  He held Jack’s hand and stood for a moment without speaking.

“I never was so glad and so sorry in my life,” said Solomon.  “It’s a hell-mogrified place to be in.  Smells like a blasted whale an’ is as cold as the north side of a grave stun on a Janooary night, an’ starvation fare, an’ they’s a man here that’s come down with the smallpox.  How’d ye git ketched?”

Jack briefly told of his capture.

“I got sick one day an’ couldn’t hide ‘cause I were makin’ tracks in the snow so I had to give in,” said Solomon.  “Margaret has been here, but they won’t let ’er come no more ‘count o’ the smallpox.  Sends me suthin’ tasty ev’ry day er two.  I tol’ er all ’bout ye.  I guess the smallpox couldn’t keep ’er ’way if she knowed you was here.  But she won’t be ’lowed to know it.  This ’ere Clarke boy has p’isoned the jail.  Nobody ’ll come here ’cept them that’s dragged.  He’s got it all fixed fer ye.  I wouldn’t wonder if he’d be glad to see ye rotted up with smallpox.”

“What kind of a man is Pinhorn?”

“A whey-faced hypercrit an’ a Tory.  Licks the feet o’ the British when they come here.”

Jack and Solomon lay for weeks in this dirty, noisome jail, where their treatment was well calculated to change opinions not deeply rooted in firm soil.  They did not fear the smallpox, as both were immune.  But their confinement was, as doubtless it was intended to be, memorably punitive.  They were “rebels”—­law-breakers, human rubbish whose offenses bordered upon treason.  The smallpox patient was soon taken away, but other conditions were not improved.  They slept on straw infested with vermin.  Their cover and food were insufficient and “not fit fer a dog,” in the words of Solomon.  Some of the boys gave in and were set free on parole, and there was one, at least, who went to work in the ranks of the British.

There is a passage in a letter of Jack Irons regarding conditions in the jail which should be quoted here: