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Updated: June 9, 2025
At Sonepur flies having failed, wasps have come forth to warn the public and the authorities, but yet to no purpose. At the Imperial Capital a certain third class booking-office is a Black-Hole fit only to be destroyed. Is it any wonder that plague has become endemic in India? Any other result is impossible where passengers always leave some dirt where they go and take more on leaving.
To-day is so cold that I dare not go on deck, and am writing in my black-hole of a cabin, in a green light, with the sun blinking through the waves as they rush over my port and scuttle. The captain is much vexed at the loss of time. I persist in thinking it a very pleasant, but utterly lazy life.
After we left him he continued shivering for three or four hours longer in that black-hole of the Old Bailey, which struck a chill into our very bones even in the brief period of our tenancy, and which could hardly be warmed by any conflagration short of the last. It appeared damp as well as cold, and a sinister effluvium came from a place of necessity at the back.
Hawes shall weigh in his favor at every part of the evidence, but you must not dictate to me the means by which I am to arrive at the truth." Mr. Williams bit his lip and was red and silent. "But, your reverence," cried Robinson, "don't let me be called a refractory prisoner when you know I am not." "Then what were you in the black-hole for?" "For obeying orders." "Nonsense! hum! Explain."
I perceived, from the smile which accompanied these questions, that I had little further to fear, and I soon understood that I had only spent one day and one night in the black-hole, and that the remainder of my sentence had been remitted.
At this the dandy-corporal sneered, and his sneers growing louder on every occasion, John Clare, at the first favourable opportunity, knocked him down with his unoccupied right hand. The offence, amounting to a crime, was at once reported to the captain, and Clare expected momentarily to be thrust into the black-hole, to be tried by court-martial, and perhaps to be shot.
Robinson was driven to appeal to the governor to put him on hard labour. "We'll choose the time for that," said the governor, with a knowing smile. "You'll be worse before you are better, my man." On the tenth day Robinson tried to exchange a word with a prisoner in chapel, and for this he was taken to the black-hole.
Eden came to him in the black-hole, and cheered him through the darkness and solitude by talking to him, not only was Robinson's sanity preserved, the man's heart was touched, and from that hour he was sworn to honesty. Then came the time for Robinson to be transported to Australia, with the promise of an early ticket-of-leave. Mr. Eden, anxious for the man's future, thought of George Fielding.
The man who is foolish enough to revivify the drink which "is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to find himself an inmate of the black-hole on very scant warning.
I am sure I knew nothing about him, except that he had originally been alone in the business, and now lived by himself in a house near Montagu Square, which was fearfully in want of painting; that he came very late of a day, and went away very early; that he never appeared to be consulted about anything; and that he had a dingy little black-hole of his own upstairs, where no business was ever done, and where there was a yellow old cartridge-paper pad upon his desk, unsoiled by ink, and reported to be twenty years of age.
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