Oexmelin was probably sold almost at the same time as Esquemeling, and was bought by the commandant-general. Not allowed to pursue his own profession of a surgeon, he was employed in the most laborious and painful work, transplanting tobacco, or thinning the young plants, grating cassava, or pressing the juice from the banana. Overworked and under fed, associating with slaves, and regarded with hatred and suspicion, he scarcely received money enough to procure either food or clothing; his master refusing, even for the inducement of two crowns a-day, to allow him to practise as physician. A single year of toil at the plantations threw him into dangerous ill health; for weeks sheltered only under an outhouse, he was kept alive by the kindness of a black slave, who brought him daily an egg. Feeble as he was, the great thirst of a tropical fever compelled him often to rise and drag himself to a neighbouring tank, that he might drink, even though to drink were to die. Recovering from this fever, a wolfish hunger was the first sign of convalescence, but to appease this he had neither food, nor money to buy it. In this condition he devoured even unripe oranges, green, hard, and bitter, and resorted to other extremities which he is ashamed to confess. On one occasion as he was descending from the rock fort, where his master lived, into the town, he met a friend, the secretary of the governor, who made him come and dine with him, and gave him a parting present of a bottle of wine; his master, who had seen what had passed, by means of a telescope, from his place of vantage, when he returned, took away the wine, and threw him into a dungeon, accusing him of being a spy and a traitor. This prison was a cellar, hollowed out of the rock, full of filth and very dark. In this he swore Oexmelin should rot in spite of all the governors in the world. Here he was kept for three days, his feet in irons, fed only by a little bread and water that they passed to him through an aperture, without even opening the door. One day, as he lay naked on the stone, and in the dark, he felt a snake twine itself, cold and slimy, round his body, tightening the folds till they grew painful, and then sliding off to its hole. On the fourth day they opened the door and tried to discover if he had told the governor anything of his master's cruelties; they then set him to dig a plot of ground near the Fort. Finding himself left unguarded, he resolved to go and complain to the governor, having first consulted a good old Capuchin, who took compassion on his pale and famished aspect. The governor instantly took pity on the wretched runaway, fed and clothed him, and on his recovery to health placed him with a celebrated surgeon of the place, who paid his value to his master; the governor being unwilling to take him into his own service, for fear he should be accused to the home authorities of taking away slaves from the planters.