CONTINUED

We stepped through the high white archway, across the bridge and over the moat. Before setting foot inside the complex itself, we first had to buy our tour passes from a stout and smiling young man who sported a Barack Obama pin on his shirt, on his desk was The Audacity of Hope. He exchanged passes for money ("Nine dollar adult, four dollar student, extra fifty pesewa for camera use") while he went on about the soft cover-bound distilled brilliance that rest just beside his right arm. We said thank-you and went on our way.

The castle was all white-washed but for what original brick and stone work lay exposed, plaster long since chipped away. The structure itself would be out of place architecrually in any Dr. Seuss book. Its construction was purely utilitarian, in that the place served well as a means to what cruel ends its denizens had in mind for those imprisoned there. Icy efficiency. There was a brick court yard, on two sides prison cells. They were small and claustrophobic; it was indicated by our guide that as many as 150 captured men or women may have resided in the poorly ventilated (there was a ventilation hole high on one wall, but on the other end of it was the armory, so any incoming air was mostly sulfurous) dungeons for perhaps many months with but a bit of bread every day and buckets lined up against the back wall. On another side of the courtyard there were two smaller chambers, each with a heavy oak door such that but a pin-prick beam of sun may be admittied through into the pitch darkness. Here prisoners were put to starve to death, be they pirates or otherwise. On the couryard itself: There were circular depressions worn into the brick where canonballs were placed so that prisoners could be chained to them and left to bake in the hot sun until death bade them welcome. There was a high balcony above where whatever governor was stationed there could watch from his quarters.

Time limit low. More to come.

All is well!

Josh