The food seemed the worst feature of our misery. So, in fact, it appears to have seemed to our despicable companions. Certainly, of the food they complained more than of the toil, the cold, the vermin, the malignity of the overseers or even of the barbarity of the Scythian guards. Anyhow their fury at the quality of their food brought to me and Agathemer an alleviation of our misery. For some hotheaded wretches, goaded beyond endurance, jerked the bars of their mill from their sockets and with them felled, beat to death and even brained the cook and his two assistants. After their corpses had been removed, the floor swabbed up and the murderers turned over to the gloating Scythians to be done to death by impalement, Scythian fashion, with all the tortures Scythian ferocity could devise, the manager went from cellar to cellar, all through the _ergastulum_, enquiring if any prisoner could cook. No one volunteered, and, when he questioned more than a few, everyone denied any knowledge of cookery. A second time he made the tour of his domain, promising any cook a warm tunic, a bunk with a thick mattress and two heavy quilts, all the food he could eat and two helpers; the helpers to have similar indulgences. On this second round, in our cellar, a Lydian, nearer to being fat than any prisoner in the _ergastulum_, admitted that he could make and bake bread, but vowed that he could not do anything else connected with cooking. Spurred on by his confession and tempted by the offers of better clothing and bedding and more food, also by the memories of Agathemer's cookery the winter before, I blurted out that Agathemer could not make bread, but could do everything else needed in cookery. Agathemer, after one reproachful glance at me, admitted that he was a cook of a sort, but declared that he was almost as bad a cook as the wretch just murdered. The overseer bade him go to the kitchen and told him he might select a helper; the baker would have been the other helper. As helper Agathemer, naturally, selected me.