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Through his mind sang the line of Lovelace:
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage."
But he gave it a fresh meaning, the very converse of that which its
author had intended. A prison, he reflected, was a prison, though
it had neither walls nor bars, however spacious it might be. And
as he realized it that morning so he was to realize it increasingly
as time sped on. Daily he came to think more of his clipped wings,
of his exclusion from the world, and less of the fortuitous liberty
he enjoyed. Nor did the contrasting of his comparatively easy lot
with that of his unfortunate fellow-convicts bring him the
satisfaction a differently constituted mind might have derived from
it. Rather did the contemplation of their misery increase the
bitterness that was gathering in his soul.
Of the forty-two who had been landed with him from the Jamaica
Merchant, Colonel Bishop had purchased no less than twenty-five.
The remainder had gone to lesser planters, some of them to
Speightstown, and others still farther north.


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