and
transform what was left of the blade into a saw.

"Doesn't it cut?" asked Uncle Prudent.

"No."

"Is the wall made of sheet iron?"

"No; it gives no metallic sound when you hit it."

"Is it of ironwood?"

"No; it isn't iron and it isn't wood."

"What is it then?"

"Impossible to say. But, anyhow, steel doesn't touch it." Uncle
Prudent, in a sudden outburst of fury, began to rave and stamp on the
sonorous planks, while his hands sought to strangle an imaginary
Robur.

"Be calm, Prudent, be calm! You have a try."

Uncle Prudent had a try, but the bowie-knife could do nothing against
a wall which its best blades could not even scratch. The wall seemed
to be made of crystal.

So it became evident that all flight was impracticable except through
the door, and for a time they must resign themselves to their fate--not
a very pleasant thing for the Yankee temperament, and very much
to the disgust of these eminently practical men. But this conclusion
was not arrived at without many objurgations and loud-sounding
phrases hurled at this Robur--who, from what had been seen of him at
the Weldon Institute, was not the sort of man to trouble himself much
about them.

Suddenly Frycollin began to give unequivocal signs of being unwell.
He began to writhe in a most lamentable fashion, either with cramp in
his stomach or in his limbs; and Uncle Prudent, thinking it his duty
to put an end to these gymnastics, cut the cords that bound him.

He had cause to be sorry for it. Immediately there was poured forth
an interminable litany, in which the terrors of fear were mingled
with the tortures of hunger. Frycollin was no worse in his brain than
in his stomach, and it would have been difficult to decide to which
organ the chief cause of the trouble should be assigned.

"Frycollin!" said Uncle Prudent.

"Master Uncle! Master Uncle!" answered the Negro between two of his
lugubrious howls.

"It is possible that we are doomed to die of hunger in this prison,
but we have made up our minds not to succumb until we have availed
ourselves of every means of alimentation to prolong our lives."

"To eat me?" exclaimed Frycollin.

"As is always done with a Negro under such circumstances! So you had
better not make yourself too obvious--"

"Or you'll have your bones picked!" said Evans.

And as Frycollin saw he might be used to prolong two existences more
precious than his own, he contented himself thenceforth with groaning
i