A Servant of Satan: Romantic Career of Prado the Assassin — page 103: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A SERVANT OF SATAN, | ‘ 95 ee. chain to which some sixty other convicts were attached. Escorted by gendarmes with loaded rifles, they were led down to the sea-shore and embarked on huge flat-bottomed barges or pontoons for conveyance to the ship which lay in the offing, which was to be their place of abode for the three weary months which would elapse before their arrival ‘in New Caledonia. The Loire was one of the small fleet of old sailing ships which have been fitted up for the transport of convicts to Noumea and to Cayenne, and which are nicknamed ‘‘ Les Omnibuses du Bagne.” Steam vessels are not used for this purpose, as speed is no object, and the voyage to France’s penitential colony in Australasia is effected via the Cape of Good Hope, instead of by the Suez Canal. ‘The +) “4 . — - e:* be ‘ . Tp s f- lower decks are divided up into a series of large iron cages, a in which the convicts are imprisoned by groups of sixty. 748 These cages are separated from each other by narrow pas- a sages, along which armed sentinels pace day and night. : Once every morning, and once every afternoon, the prison- : ers are brought up on deck for an hour’s airing when the : weather is fine; but when storms prevail, they are frequently & confined in the stifling atmosphere of the lower decks for e whole weeks at a time? In front of every cage, hydrants . are fixed, by means of which, in case of any serious dis- e turbance, the inmates can be deluged with powerful jets of : ecld water, and if that prove ineffectual, then with hot i. water. - a A heavy gale was blowing in the Bay when the Loire 2 spread its sails to the wind and started on its long and 2 dreary voyage. 7 A fortnight later the vessel cast anchor in the port of : Santa Cruz, of the Canary Islands, where a stay of six days , was to be made for the purpose of shipping the provisions = which were to last until the arrival of the transport at its des- ae tination. While there, Frederick and three of his fellow-pris- ge