We could not now complain of our fare. We had an abundance of beef and mutton, beside a full allowance of bread, &c. The beef, to be sure, was poor, lean stuff, but the mutton was excellent. The sheep at the Cape have a peculiarity, which may cause the reader to smile. They have enormously large, flat tails, weighing from twelve to twenty pounds. These are regularly sold by the pound for purposes of cookery. Should any one treat this statement as a forecastle yarn, I refer him to the descriptions of these sheep, given by travellers and naturalists.[23] Besides our prison allowance, we had opportunity to purchase as many little luxuries and niceties as our slender finances would permit. These were furnished by a slave, who was the property of the old Dutchman, and who was so far a favorite as to be indulged with two wives, and the privilege of selling sundry small articles to the prisoners. This sable polygamist furnished us with coffee, made from burnt barley, for a _doublegee_ (an English penny)[24] per pint; the same sum would purchase a sausage, a piece of fish, or a glass of rum. On equally reasonable terms, he furnished us with blackberries, oranges, &c. Our men, who, by the way had eaten fruit in every quarter of the globe, and were therefore competent judges, pronounced the latter the best in the world. The berries afforded me a rich treat at Christmas. To obtain means for the purchase of these dainties, our men braided hats, wrought at mechanical employments, or at such pursuits as their respective tastes and capacities suggested. These occupations served to beguile our confinement of much of its tediousness. Still, we had many vacant, listless hours. To fill them, we resorted to the demoralizing practice of gambling. A game with balls, called shake-bag, loo, venture, all-fours, &c. occupied our evening hours, and sometimes the whole night. It was not uncommon for the game to be protracted beyond the midnight hour of Saturday, into the sacred moments of the holy Sabbath. On one of these guilty mornings, some of us, on retiring to a shed, found the dead body of a black slave, hanging by the rope, with which, in a moment of unpardonable despair, he had committed the horrid crime of suicide. The hour, the scene, the place, our recent guilty profanation of God’s holy day, conspired to fill many of us with profound dread. In my own mind it led to a few transient purposes of amendment. Alas! when the bright sun arose, these purposes had vanished. The influence of vice triumphed. I grew more and more hardened in wickedness.