When the capture of the place was complete, and its defenders had been carried off, some to be sacrificed for the sins of the government, and others to meet with mercy, Charles pressed forward, with a multitude of companions, to release the captives. It was hard labour to pull the clenched doors from their staples and hinges; and in some cases it was found easier to effect the work in a yet more irregular manner: as in one to which Steele called Charles’s attention when they accidentally met in the centre of the fortress, where the light of day, however, streamed upon them through the demolished roof. Steele’s face was working in strong emotion, and he appeared speechless while he seized his friend by the arm, and drew him to gaze on what made his heart’s blood boil. Steele pointed through a breach in the enormous wall, whose thickness shut out all sound from the inmate of the dungeon it inclosed; and there, with eyes drooped before the unwonted light,—a light which, however, only half displayed the squalid sickliness of his countenance, sat one who seemed to take no heed of any human presence. His expanded nostrils and half-opened mouth seemed to betoken that there had been passion and expectation within him; but the apathy and despondency of his attitude exhibited a strange contradiction to these evidences. When the first face appeared through the opening, he fumbled uneasily with his hands in his coarse dungeon dress; and when he was hailed, more and more loudly, under the idea that he was deaf, his beard was seen to stir upon his breast, and his lips to move, as if he was attempting in vain to articulate a sound. The endeavour presently ceased, though voice after voice was heard in importunity,—sometimes endearing, sometimes rallying,—that he would rise and help to free himself. It was a work of time to make a breach large enough to admit his deliverers; and at last, just before the first of them clambered in, the captive uplifted his broken and unmodulated voice in a few words, one or two of which Steele recognized to be English. “O! he is a Briton!” cried he, clenching his hands above his head in the extremity of passion; and, staggering against the wall, he uttered a deep curse on the tyranny by which a countryman had been goaded into madness far from his own land, and from all who could know or avenge his state. Again and again he looked; again and again he withdrew, unable to bear the alternating aspects of idiotcy and gibbering madness. At last, he made trial of a new kind of stimulus; leaning through the breach, and calling to the captive,— “O come, and take the hand of a brother once more! Look up, and tell us that your deliverers are welcome! Let it be crime, or let it be misery that has stricken you so deeply, the last day of your dungeon life is over. Come, and hear about England! Come and feel the fresh air——”