The conditions at St. Malo were so had that I was not sorry when, after some few weeks there, a great number of us were marched out under an armed guard to a castle about fifteen miles to the southeast.  A very woebegone battalion we must have looked as we tramped to our new quarters—­many of us suffering from prison fever, all more or less in rags, and half starved.  The change was due to no compassion on the part of the authorities, but to an alarm in the town.  A sloop had come in, it appeared, with news that an attack was intended against the port by no other than Benbow, and it was feared that the prisoners might seize this opportunity for a mutiny.  I did not learn this until after we had reached our new prison; it came out through one of our jailers, a talkative fellow who liked to air his little English, otherwise I should not have felt so much pleased at the change of quarters; though even if Benbow had assaulted the town and we prisoners had risen, it was improbable that we could have found a means of escaping to him.

The new prison was, as I have said, a castle, or to speak more precisely, the ruins of one.  It had once been a place of considerable dimensions and of great strength; but it was now far gone towards demolition.  The outer walls still stood, completely encircled by a moat, the only entrance being by way of the drawbridge which, to judge by its moss-grown edges, had not been raised for many a day.  Marching over it, and through an archway, we found ourselves in the courtyard, a large area roughly square in shape, and open to the sky.

At the farther end, built against the wall in the intervals between three round towers, a kind of wooden barracks had been erected for our accommodation, the only habitable portion of the castle being the keep, flanking the entrance, and this was devoted to our guardians.  Our barracks was in two stories, the lower being intended for use by day, the upper, which was reached by a ladder, containing our sleeping apartments.  The rooms on the ground were lit by windows opening into the courtyard; the sleeping rooms only by narrow gratings in the wooden wall.  I did not learn all this at once, of course; but I have set it down here for convenience sake.

On arriving at the castle we were marshaled in the courtyard, and taken into the keep one by one.  There, with the aid of the loquacious sergeant as interpreter, we gave our names, ages, and descriptions to the commandant, a sour-visaged fellow, who entered the particulars in a book.  Then we were severally assigned our sleeping quarters, and I found myself one of a squad of ten, none of whom was known to me with the exception of Vetch and Dilly.  Vetch once more protested against being ranked with common seamen, and demanded to be released on parole; but the commandant ordered him gruffly to be silent, and he went away very sullen and wrathful.