I don’t know how much time had passed, but when I came to my senses I was laid out on the straw mattress. In the half-light of the cell, I saw that Jacob was gone. I got up and felt the back wall, where the rusty shackles now dangled pitifully. I held them up and saw the dried blood and little shreds of skin still caught in the nuts, as they had been pulled.
I began feeling my head and found a big, rigid swelling over my right temple. It was bleeding when touched, as far as I could tell I had a fractured skull. Whoever had hit me with the hammer probably wanted me dead. I could feel the edges of the weapon imprinted into the bone.
The face seemed in order, the nose in its place, but my fingers felt some deep wounds made by a sharp object, probably an axe or a gaff. They were also bleedin
