Oakum-picking cannot be called an intellectual employment. I should say, too, it was decidedly monotonous, though I can hardly speak from personal experience. I tried the experiment of unravelling the rope, but it was so intensely provoking that I turned my thoughts to evading the necessity. My turnkey and I were friends within twenty-four hours, and I consulted him about getting a substitute. As turnkey and prisoner had both left before I had, I may say, without injuring anyone, that for a weekly consideration my task was picked daily. Of a morning a bundle was mysteriously thrown into my cell, and a few moments later I proudly descended with “my work,” and dropped the unused rope on the stair. The usual task that prisoners have to pick is three pounds a day, but being a light-labour man I was only assigned one pound. I invariably returned a portion of this modified amount unpicked, thereby lulling the suspicions of a dense but offensively-inclined taskmaster. Oakum is one of the most tell-tale commodities I ever came across. If merely unravelled, it remains black and juicy; but the more it is picked and pulled the paler it gets, till it is capable of assuming the appearance of Turkish tobacco. An experienced eye can at once detect the amount of labour bestowed on it, and some of the huge bundles I saw my _confrères_ carrying down were works of art as regards finish. The man who actually picked my oakum was the “cleaner,” a privileged individual with a roving commission. His duties frequently brought him to my cell, and he told me he was a “racing man.” I discovered, however, as we became better acquainted, that the designation is capable of considerable expansion, and that his peculiar talent was the “three-card trick.” He knew every racecourse in England as well as every prison, and never failed of a morning to inquire how I had slept, adding, that he always slept badly the first few nights in a strange prison; and my reply that I was not affected in a “similar way” appeared to cause him considerable surprise. In my unravelling process I one day chanced to come across a bit of cane. It was certainly moist from proximity to the tar, but I carefully dried and subsequently smoked it. I can hardly say the pleasure was unalloyed, for it bore such a resemblance to the fragrant British Havanna that I got alarmed, and put it out. It was the only smoke I had for months.