By the time I got there, I had learned to speak the language fairly enough to make my way across the country, and I have been living in hopes that, somehow or other, I might get possession of a rope long enough to let myself down the rocks.

But, as I told you, I have never so much as seen one up there twenty feet long.
"I did think of gradually buying enough cotton cloth to twist up and make a rope of; but you see, when one has been years in captivity, one loses a lot of one's energy.

If I had been worse off, I should have set about the thing in earnest; but you see, I was not badly treated at all.

I was always doing odd carpentering jobs for the colonel and officers, and armourer's work at the guns.

Any odd time I had over, I did jobs for the soldiers and their wives.