"At sunset we departed. Our conductors having halted till three o'clock in the morning, we again set out and continued our march till noon, when they again stopped two hours to take some refreshment, and afterwards directed their course to the south-west. We arrived that night at a fort and were immediately put into a dungeon. There we found two other prisoners, one of them our ship-mate and the other a deserter from the company's troops. "The next morning they opened the gates and made signs to us to come out. My companions complied, but I chose rather to stay where I was as I found myself extremely weak and my legs were covered with ulcers. I begged them to give me a little lamp oil to foment them, which they did. Our only nourishment was water and a quart of rice a day, though there were four of us, and a small pot of grease instead of butter. I rubbed my legs with oil and grease, and on the fourth day found myself much better, which gave me fresh spirits. We were permitted to walk morning and evening before the dungeon. "In about three weeks my legs were almost well, so that I was able to walk. We began to entertain some hopes of making our escape, and taking an opportunity, I, with some difficulty, got high enough upon the wall to look over it, and found it was very lofty and surrounded with a wide moat or ditch; but there was a path between the wall and the ditch, so that we might choose our place to swim over, if it proved deep. We got, several times, some strands of rope off the dooleys which they had carried us in, as they happened to be left within the bounds of our liberty; and in a few days collected so many pieces that when knotted together they made several fathoms.