These Alchemical ruminations were now most rudely broken in upon by a persistent choking and gagging noise. Some one else had entered the Condemned Hold; and, from the sounds of it, he had swallowed his own tongue. This was most irregular. It was a common enough thing for free men to pay a gaoler to let them go in to the Condemned Hold for a few minutes’ time and gape at the soon-to-be-dead men, much as people would go to Bedlam to see the Raving Mad; but the practice had been suspended for as long as Jack Shaftoe was in the place, for Ike Newton was leery of escape-plots. So this choking wretch, whoever he was, must have some special dispensation. Jack rotated his head—carefully, for the iron neck-collar had a few nasty burrs on it—and saw naught save a wee hand gripping a rope. Rotating his head a bit more, and sacrificing some neck-skin, he at last got sight of a boy, standing on tiptoe, and hanging himself. That is, he had a noose round his neck and was holding the free end of the rope up above him, acting as his own gallows. Seeing that he had at last got Jack’s attention, he now went in to a phantastickal parody of a hanged man, rolling his eyes, pawing at the noose with his free hand, and dancing about the Condemned Hold on tippy-toe when he wasn’t spasmodically twitching.