To die is not a difficult thing, but to die in such slow and horrible fashion was maddening.  Like a trapped beast of the wild, I experienced ecstasies of fear, and yelled and howled until I realized that such vocal exercise merely stabbed my heart more hotly and at the same time consumed much of the little air in my lungs.

I gave over and lay quiet for a long time—­an eternity it seemed then, though now I am confident that it could have been no longer than a quarter of an hour.  I grew dizzy with semi-asphyxiation, and my heart thumped until it seemed surely it would burst the canvas that bound me.  Again I lost control of myself and set up a mad howling for help.

In the midst of this I heard a voice from the next dungeon.

“Shut up,” it shouted, though only faintly it percolated to me.  “Shut up.  You make me tired.”

“I’m dying,” I cried out.

“Pound your ear and forget it,” was the reply.

“But I am dying,” I insisted.

“Then why worry?” came the voice.  “You’ll be dead pretty quick an’ out of it.  Go ahead and croak, but don’t make so much noise about it.  You’re interruptin’ my beauty sleep.”

So angered was I by this callous indifference that I recovered self-control and was guilty of no more than smothered groans.  This endured an endless time—­possibly ten minutes; and then a tingling numbness set up in all my body.  It was like pins and needles, and for as long as it hurt like pins and needles I kept my head.  But when the prickling of the multitudinous darts ceased to hurt and only the numbness remained and continued verging into greater numbness I once more grew frightened.

“How am I goin’ to get a wink of sleep?” my neighbour, complained.  “I ain’t any more happy than you.  My jacket’s just as tight as yourn, an’ I want to sleep an’ forget it.”

“How long have you been in?” I asked, thinking him a new-comer compared to the centuries I had already suffered.

“Since day before yesterday,” was his answer.

“I mean in the jacket,” I amended.

“Since day before yesterday, brother.”

“My God!” I screamed.

“Yes, brother, fifty straight hours, an’ you don’t hear me raisin’ a roar about it.  They cinched me with their feet in my back.  I am some tight, believe me.  You ain’t the only one that’s got troubles.  You ain’t ben in an hour yet.”

“I’ve been in hours and hours,” I protested.

“Brother, you may think so, but it don’t make it so.  I’m just tellin’ you you ain’t ben in an hour.  I heard ‘m lacin’ you.”

The thing was incredible.  Already, in less than an hour, I had died a thousand deaths.  And yet this neighbour, balanced and equable, calm-voiced and almost beneficent despite the harshness of his first remarks, had been in the jacket fifty hours!

“How much longer are they going to keep you in?” I asked.