When I awoke I was lying stark naked upon the floor of my cell.  My head was racking and throbbing like a hammer.  Raising my hand to my forehead I sharply withdrew it.  It was quite wet, and as I looked more closely, I saw that it was blood.  I felt again and found my face clotted and my hair reeking wet from a ragged wound on the head.  Evidently the soldier whose rifle I had seen swinging through the air, had brought it down heavily upon my skull, felling me like an ox.  How long I had lain unconscious I never knew, but it must have been for some time, judging from the quantity of blood I had lost, which was partially congealed on my face, neck and shoulders.  I shivered with the cold and collecting my senses I commenced to dress my wound.  For bandages I had to tear my shirt to ribbons.  I swabbed the ragged wound as well as I could, and then bound it up.  Weary and faint from loss of blood I dressed myself with extreme difficulty and then proceeded to examine my present abode.

We are familiar with the cramped quarters at the Tower of London into which our mediaeval sovereigns were wont to thrust our ancestors who fell foul of authority.  Wesel Prison is the German counterpart of our famous quondam fortress-prison.  The cells are little, if any, larger than those in the Tower, and are used to this day.  My residence measured about nine feet in length by about four and a half feet in width, and was approximately ten feet in height—­about the size of the entrance hall in an average small suburban residence.  High up in the wall was a window some two feet square.  But it admitted little or no daylight.  It was heavily barred, while outside was a sloping hood which descended to a point well below the sill, so that all the light which penetrated into the cell was reflected from below against the black interior of the hood.  In addition there was a glazed window, filthy dirty, while even the slight volume of light which it permitted to pass was obstructed further by small-mesh wire netting.  Consequently the interior was wrapped in a dismal gloom throughout the greater part of the day, through which one could scarcely discern the floor when standing upright.  After daylight waned the cell was enveloped in Cimmerian blackness until daybreak, no lights being permitted.

The bed comprised three rough wooden planks, void of all covering and mattress, and raised a few inches above the floor.  The other appointments were exceedingly meagre, consisting of a small jug and basin as well as a small sanitary pan.  High on the wall was a broken shelf.  That was all.  The wall itself was about two feet in thickness and wrought of masonry.

The walls themselves were covered with inscriptions written and scratched by those who had been doomed to this depressing domicile.  Some of the drawings were beautifully executed, but the majority of the inscriptions testified, far more eloquently than words can describe, to the utter depravity of many of those who had preceded me, and who had passed their last span of life on this earth within these confines.