I believe that there were five hundred men employed in this way, and all of them condemned like us to galley-work for life.

We were divided into squads of twenty-five, but Elzevir was drafted to another squad and a different part of the workings, so I saw him no more except at odd times, now and again, when our gangs met, and we could exchange a word or two in passing.
Thus I had no solace of any company but my own, and was driven to thinking, and to occupy my mind with the recollection of the past.

And at first the life of my boyhood, now lost for ever, was constantly present even in my dreams, and I would wake up thinking that I was at school again under Mr.Glennie, or talking in the summer-house with Grace, or climbing Weatherbeech Hill with the salt Channel breeze singing through the trees.

But alas! these things faded when I opened my eyes, and knew the foul-smelling wood-hut and floor of fetid straw where fifty of us lay in fetters every night; I say I dreamt these things at first, but by degrees remembrance grew blunted and the images less clear, and even these sweet, sad visions of the night came to me less often.

Thus life became a weary round, in which month followed month, season followed season, year followed year, and brought always the same eternal profitless-work.