seen vermin, the two men.

It received such light as it got through a grating of iron bars
fashioned like a pretty large window, by means of which it could be
always inspected from the gloomy staircase on which the grating
gave. There was a broad strong ledge of stone to this grating
where
the bottom of it was let into the masonry, three or four feet above
the ground. Upon it, one of the two men lolled, half sitting and
half lying, with his knees drawn up, and his feet and shoulders
planted against the opposite sides of the aperture. The bars were
wide enough apart to admit of his thrusting his arm through to the
elbow; and so he held on negligently, for his greater ease.

A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the
imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were
all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and
haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was
rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a
vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness
outside, and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one
of the spice islands of the Indian ocean.

The man who lay on the ledge of the grating was even chilled. He
jerked his great cloak more heavily upon him by an impatient
movement of one shoulder, and growled, 'To the devil with this
Brigand of a Sun that never shines in here!'

He was waiting to be fed, looking sideways through the bars that he
might see the further down the stairs, with much of the expression