第75章

"As a political offender I was doomed to imprisonment at Ceuta, an old Moorish seaport town in Morocco, opposite Gibraltar and upon the side of the ancient mountain Abyla.This mountain forms one of the 'Pillars of Hercules,' the Rock of Gibraltar being the other.It is almost impregnable, and is used by Spain as Siberia is used by Russia, only it is far, far more horrible.The town was built by the Moors in 945, and nowhere else on earth are there to be found an equal number of devices for the torture of human beings.If anyone thinks the horrors of the Inquisition are no longer perpetrated let him get sent to Ceuta: I have good cause to believe that the Inquisition itself is far from dead in Spain.Alasfor the person who is sent to Ceuta! The town is small, and, to guard against possible attack, the Moors constructed a chain of fortresses around it.It is in the black cellars of these disintegrating fortresses that the dungeons are located.They are in tiers to the depth of fifty or sixty feet, and are hewn out of the solid rock.They are reached through narrow openings in the stone floors of the fortresses, and when one of these horrible holes is opened the foul odor of filth and decomposition is utterly overpowering.Some of these dungeons contain as many as thirty or forty men.I was placed in a cell reserved for solitary confinement.I have never been a man who regarded life seriously, or feared to risk it upon sufficient occasion, but my heart froze within me when the horror of my situation was revealed to me.A stone box perhaps eight feet square - as I lay upon the floor I could touch its opposite sides with my hands and feet - had been prepared for my entrance by cutting a slit in one of its walls just large enough for the passage of my body.Through this narrow opening I was dropped into the total darkness within.A blacksmith followed and welded my fetters, for locks and keys are never used.A chain having a heavy weight pendant from it was riveted to my ankle, and an iron band was similarly fastened to my waist.This band was fastened by a chain to an iron ring deeply sunk in the solid rock.When these horrible preparations were completed the blacksmith left me and a mason bricked up the slit through which I had entered, leaving only a hand- breadth of space for air and the thrusting through of such scraps of food as were to be allowed me.Language is powerless to describe the feelings of a man in such a position.He realises that his only hope is in disease - disease bred of the darkness, the dampness, the starvation, and the horrible filth.He says to himself: 'How long, 0 God! how long?' - For hours I remained prone and inert - how long I do not know; night and day are all one in the dungeons of Ceuta.Then I began to think.Could I escape? I felt that all power of thought, all cleverness would soon desert me, and I said to myself: 'If anything is to be done, it must be done at once.' I knew not then what long-drawn horrors a mortal could endure.Whenever I attempted to walk the iron mass fastened to my leg would 'bring me up short,' often, in my early forgetfulness of it, throwing me prone upon myface.After a little I learned to move with a halting gait, striding out with the free limb and pausing to pull my burden after me with the other.This habit, learned in the squalor and darkness of the dungeon hells of Ceuta, I have never been able to unlearn.

"It was many days before I could see how anything short of a miracle could enable me to escape.I tried to calmly reason it all out, and every time came to the same horrible conclusion, viz.: I must rot there unless help came to me from without.This seemed impossible, and all the horrors of a lingering death stared me in the face.Every two or three days one of the jailers would come to the slit in the masonry and leave there a dish of water and a few crusts of bread.I tried on one occasion to speak with him, but he only laughed in my face and turned away.Finally I hit upon a plan which seemed to offer the only possible means of escape.In my college days I was well acquainted with M.Charcot, and even assisted in some of his earlier hypnotic experiments.The subject interested me, and I followed it closely till I became something of an adept myself.There were in those days but few people I could not mesmerise, provided sufficient opportunity were allowed me for hypnotic suggestion.I determined to see if any of this old power still remained with me, and, if so, to strive to render my jailer subservient to my will.But how should I keep him within ear-shot long enough to work upon him? Clearly all appeals to pity were useless.I must excite his greed, nothing else would reach him.This was not an easy thing to do without a sou in my possession, yet I did it.When I heard his step I crawled to the opening in the wall and mumbled in a crazy sort of a way about a hidden treasure.At the word 'treasure' I saw him pause and listen, but I pretended not to be aware of his presence and rambled on, in a loose, disjointed fashion, about piracies committed by me and the great amount of booty I had secreted.My plan worked perfectly.The jailer came to the aperture in the wall and called me to him.Muttering incoherently, I obeyed.He asked me what offence brought me there, and I, with a good deal of intentional misunderstanding, told him I was a pirate and a smuggler.He asked me where the treasure I had been talking about was hidden.My reply, - I remember the exact words in which I couched it, - made him minecompletely.I said: 'We buried it near Fez -Treasure?I don't know anything about any treasure.'