On the main deck was a railed space named the _pound_, wherein the prisoners were allowed to walk and amuse themselves during the day; and there they were at liberty to expose for sale those boxes of dominoes, toy ships, buttons, bodkins, and other trifles, which, with the native ingenuity of their country, French prisoners were wont to manufacture from their ration bones and pieces of wood given to them by the ship carpenter. But from the character of our prisoners--the refuse of the other prison hulks--I found few such traces of industry on board the _Alceste_. In consequence of the absence of the marines, the discomfort of the ship while lying careened to port, and her vicinity to the land, Lieutenant I---- soon found the prisoners in a furious state of discontent, and beginning to encourage hopes of breaking loose by cutting a hole in the ship's side with a knife. The ringleaders he had punished according to his printed regulations; but ten days in the black hole, among rats and bilge-water, extra deck-cleaning duty, and short allowance of hard biscuits and stale "swipes," utterly failed to repress their turbulence and insubordination. There were sailors, soldiers, privateersmen, merchant-seamen, civilians, and even officers who had broken their parole, crammed together in wretchedness and filth, some of them being almost in a state of nudity, with nothing more than a piece of old sail tied round them, notwithstanding all the excellent regulations of the Transport Board, and the exertions of the officers and slender crew of the _Alceste_, for most of these Frenchmen were now so desperate and degraded that they cared less for death than life. Thus, never shall I forget the impression made upon me when I looked along the far vista of the lower deck, when the flakes of yellow sunlight were streaming across it through the barred gratings of the triced-up ports, and saw the tattered figures, the scrubby beards, the scarred forms--scarred less in battle than by prison brawls (for some who were obnoxious to the rest were horribly mutilated)--the shock heads of black, uncombed hair, the unwashed visages and bloodshot eyes of those prisoners--the dull apathy of some, the ferocious hate exhibited by others; and when I heard the yells, screams, obscenity and mockery with which they greeted us as new comers, and chiefly when my guard, as a hint, deliberately loaded their carbines with ball-cartridge before them. "From what do all these miseries and disorders arise?" I asked, as we retired and entered the great cabin, the windows of which faced to the coast of Kent. "You may well inquire," replied Lieutenant I----; "they have their origin in an inordinate passion for gambling." "Gambling?"