“The plan of the prison yard shows that there were a number of small cells used by the ringed brotherhood, and the pleading of our amiable protectress secured for us the liberty to occupy them. It is true they were very small, the one I inhabited being about five feet wide with just enough length to lie down in; it was so low that I could not stand upright except in the middle where the roof was highest; but it was Elysium when compared with the suffocating choke of the inner prison. Nor could it be called altogether solitary confinement, for one of our gaolers had a pretty daughter about sixteen years old, who took a wonderful fancy to me and was a frequent visitor in my cell. She supplied me, too, with an unspeakable luxury, water for ablution. Oh, who can appreciate the gift but those who have been long deprived of it? A scrap of rag, moistened with some of the water given us to drink, only served to smear the grime like a plaster over our bodies. Now, once again I could call myself comparatively clean. My cell had other advantages. My eyes escaped many scenes of revolting cruelty; my ears, many foul anathemas and gross abuse; my lungs and olfactories, all sorts of abominations. The chief loss was the society of my friends. The rats, too, were numerous and troublesome at first; but these, though a disgusting nuisance, I managed to turn to account by the fancy of the _pahquets_ for their flesh. The Burmese hold rats in about the same estimation as we do hares, and sell them commonly in their markets for about their own weight in lead. My cell, therefore, might be regarded as a well-stocked preserve for game. The burrows ran in all directions, and hardly a day passed without my bagging a few heads of this novel kind of game and handing them over to my pretty visitor’s father, who willingly lent me his spear for the purpose of destroying them. The bait of a few grains of boiled rice at the entrance of the burrows brought them out in shoals and gave me the opportunity of spearing them. ‘What do you expect will be your fate?’ said this pious Buddhist as he once took the struggling vermin from the spear, ‘when the time comes for me to serve you as you are serving that creature?’ They all looked forward to the pleasure of decapitating us, and when in a mild humour would promise me as a favour, to use their greatest skill so that I should scarcely feel it. What a consoling thought!