'Ten-pun' note might do something,' answered the warder reflectively. 'The risk's a big 'un. If I'm nabbed I lose my berth straight off and stand a blessed good chance of being brought into one of these here fancy shops myself.' 'Why, who's to know?' 'Well,' replied the warder, looking round, 'it 'ud stun yer to count the spies that seem to be bred regular in a place like this, one man watching another for the reward. But I'll chance it, I will, the first time I go ashore. Now then, you Fifty-five, what are you making all that row for?' The occupant of the next cell, Number Fifty-five, as he was in due sequence, had apparently gone mad. He raved and shrieked, cursed and yelled continuously. He banged at the door, which he could not well kick as they had taken away his boots. But ever and anon he amused himself with wildly extravagant rhapsodies, as well as by devoting his gaolers to the infernal deities, as also the heads of any Church running counter to his sectarian prejudices. Then he was taken out, secured, and hauled before the chief officer for punishment. That autocrat ordered the sullen-visaged 'Vandemonian,' as the warders designated him, to undergo several days in the 'box' on bread and water. He was carried off, struggling and cursing, by main force, being crammed into the 'box' aforesaid. This retreat, which was inspected by Lance on another occasion, appeared to be a species of _oubliette_, apparently in the very keel of the vessel, so constructed that the delinquent could neither stand up, lie down, nor sit with ease. In addition to this rigorous confinement a gag was placed in the mouth of the offender if he refused to stop his unseemly outcry. A few minutes before eleven o'clock Lance's door was unlocked, and he was summoned forth to take part in a new portion of the programme. Being marched into the centre of the passage, he there saw a large iron cage, of which the door, just sufficiently large to admit one man, was opened. On either side stood an armed sentry with rifle at the _poise_. An additional pair of warders was in attendance. The inmates of the cells, called by number, not by name, shuffled or stumbled out and made for the door of the cage, like tamed wild beasts under the keeper's whip. It was a piteous, strangely-moving sight to a lover of his kind, had such been there. Men of various types and all ages obeyed the summons--the white-haired convict, reckless and hopeless, the larger half of whose life had been spent within prison walls, and who was now doomed to linger out the last years of a ruined life in places of confinement. The whole expression of the face denoted the human wreck which the _forçat_ had become. The evil eye, furtive yet ferocious, the animal mouth and jaw, the shaven, sallow cheek--every faculty once capable of rising to the loftier attributes of manhood seemed obliterated--the residuum but approached the type of the simian anthropoid--bestial, savage, obscene.