The pools and ditches were white with ice, and all the countryside lay stiff and stark, a prisoner bound in chains and iron.

To stand there looking at it for even five minutes made one's backbone rattle for half a day.

And yet, even then, in Sercq the sun shone soft and warm, the sky and sea were blue, the fouaille was golden-brown on the hillside, the young gorse was showing pale on the Eperquerie, and the Butcher's Broom on Tintageu was brilliant with scarlet berries.
To any man--even to our warders--Amperdoo was a desolation akin to death.
To many a weary prisoner it proved death itself and so the gate to wider life.

To one man it was purgatory but short removed from hell, and that he came through it unscathed was due to that which he had at first regarded as a misfortune, but which, by shutting him into a world of his own with those he loved, kept his heart sweet and fresh and unassoiled.
In time, indeed, my hearing gradually returned, and long before I left the prison it was quite recovered.

But before it came back the habit of loneliness had grown upon me, and there was little temptation to break through it, and I lived much within myself.
Many the nights I sought my hammock as soon as the daylight faded, and lay there thinking of them all at home.