l in approaching the cage, and though they
continued to poke the prisoners with sticks they did not venture again
to thrust a hand through the bars. At sunset the guards again came
round, lifted the cage and carried it into a shed. A platter of dirty
rice and a jug of water were put into the cage; two of the men lighted
their long pipes and sat down on guard beside it, and, the doors being
closed, the captives were left in peace.

"If this sort of thing is to go on, as I suppose it is," Fothergill
said, "the sooner they cut off our heads the better."

"It is very bad, Jack. I am sore all over with those probes from their
sharp sticks."

"I don't care for the pain, Percy, so much as the humiliation of the
thing. To be stared at and poked at as if we were wild beasts by these
curs, when with half a dozen of our men we could send a hundred of them
scampering, I feel as if I could choke with rage."

"You had better try and eat some of this rice, Jack. It is beastly, but
I daresay we shall get no more until to-morrow night, and we must keep
up our strength if we can. At any rate, the water is not bad, that's a
comfort."

"No thanks to them," Jack growled. "If there had been any bad water in
the neighbourhood they would have given it to us."

For six weeks the sufferings of the prisoners continued. Their captors
avoided towns where the authorities would probably at once have taken
the prisoners out of their hands. No one would have recognized the two
captives as the midshipmen of the _Perseus_; their clothes were in
rags--torn to pieces by the thrusts of the sharp-pointed bamboos, to
which they had daily been subjected--the bad food, the cramped position,
and the misery which they suffered had worn both lads to skeletons;
their hair was matted with filth, their faces begrimed with dirt. Percy
was so weak that he felt he could not stand. Fothergill, being three
years older, was less exhausted, but he knew that he, too, could not
support his sufferings for many days longer. Their bodies were covered
with sores, and try as they would they were able to catch only a few
minutes' sleep at a time, so much did the bamboo bars hurt their wasted
limbs.

They seldom exchanged a word during the daytime, suffering in silence
the persecutions to which they were exposed, but at night they talked
over their homes and friends in England, and their comrades on board
ship, seldom saying a word as to their present position. They were now