At first it troubled me, but there was in it nothing whatever of the captor gloating over his prisoner; simply, as far as I could make out, a gloomy desire to note how I took matters, which put me on my mettle to keep up a bold front, though my heart was heavy enough at times at the puzzling strangeness of it all.
I thought much of Carette and my mother, and my grandfather and Krok, and I walked each day for hours, to and fro, to and fro, to keep myself from falling sick or going stupid.

But the time passed slower than time had ever gone with me before, and I grew sick to death of that narrow cleft in the rock.
By a mark I made on the wall for each day of my stay there, it was on the tenth day that Torode first spoke to me as I ate my dinner.
"Listen!" he said, so unexpectedly, after his strange silence, that I jumped in spite of myself.
"Once you asked to join us and I refused.

Now you must join us--or die.

I have no desire for your death, but--well--you understand." "When I asked to join you I believed you honest privateers.

You are thieves and murderers.