HOW I CAME ACROSS ONE AT AMPERDOO I had worked hard at my carvings, and had become both a better craftsman and a keener bargainer, and so had managed to accumulate a small store of money.

I could see my way without much difficulty over the first high wooden stockade, but so far I could not see how to pass the numberless sentries that patrolled constantly between it and the outer fence.
And while I was still striving to surmount this difficulty in my own mind, which would I knew be still more difficult in actual fact, that occurred which upset all my plans and tied me to the prison for many a day.
Among the new-comers one day was one evidently sick or sorely wounded.

His party, we heard, had come up by barge from the coast.

The hospital was full, and they made a pallet for the sick man in a corner of our long room.
He lay for the most part with his face to the wall, and seemed much broken with the journey.
I had passed him more than once with no more than the glimpse of a white face.

An attendant from the hospital looked in now and again, at long intervals, to minister to his wants.