“Yes, your Majesty, I understand,” I answered. “Lock him into the pantry, Jermyn,” said the Duke, “while we decide what to do with him. Go with Mr. Jermyn, boy. We sha'n't hurt you. Don't be frightened. Give him some oranges, Jermyn.” CHAPTER V. I GO TO SEA Mr. Jermyn led me to the pantry (a little room on the ground floor), where he placed a plate of oranges before me. “See how many you can eat,” he said. “But don't try to burgle yourself free. This is a strong room.” He locked the heavy door, leaving me alone with a well-filled pantry, which seemed to be without a window. A little iron grating near the ceiling served as a ventilator. There was no chance of getting out through that. The door was plated with iron. The floor was of concrete. I was a prisoner now in good earnest. I was no longer frightened; but I had had such scares that night that I had little stomach for the fruit. I was only anxious to be allowed to go back to my bed. I heard a dull noise in the upper part of the house, followed by the falling of a plank. “There goes my bridge,” I thought. “Are they going to be so mean as to call my uncle out of bed, to show him what I've been doing?” I thought that perhaps they would do this, as my uncle (for all that I knew) might be in their plot. “Well,” I said to myself, “I shall get a good thrashing. Perhaps that brute Ephraim will be told to thrash me. But thrashing or no, I've had enough of going out at night. I'll ask my uncle not to thrash me, but to put me into the Navy. I should love that. I know that I shall never get on in London.” This sudden plan of the Navy, about which I had never before thought, seemed to me to be a good way of getting out of my deserts. I felt sure that my uncle would be charmed to be rid of me; while I knew very well that boys of that generation often entered the Navy, in the care of the captains, as naval cadets (or, as they were then called, “captain's servants”) at the ages of eight or nine. I wondered why the debate lasted so long. Naturally, in that gloomy little prison, lit by a single tallow candle, with all my anxieties heavy on my mind, the time passed slowly. But they were so long in making up their minds that it seemed as though they had forgotten me. I began to remember horrible tales of people shut up in secret rooms until they starved to death, or till the rats ate them. I remembered the tale of the nun being walled up in a vault of her convent, brick by brick, till the last brick shut off the last glimmer of the bricklayer's lantern, till the last layer of mortar made for her the last sound she would hear, the patting clink of the trowel on the brick, before it was all horrible dark silence for ever. I wondered how many people had been silenced in that way. I wondered how long I should live, if that was what these men decided.