Words

• apparition = something that you think you see, especially a ghost or a dead spirit
• authority = here: the government
• barren = empty , with no plants or other vegetation on it
• confederate = person from one of the Southern States that separated from the North in the Civil War
• convict = to find a person guilty of a crime
• decline = to become weaker
• deplorable = terrible, bad
• evil = bad
• federal = for all of the United States
• fugitive = someone who is looked for by the government
• harsh = cruel, bad
• hatchet = a tool or instrument with which you can chop off things
• haunted = ghostly, strange
• immediately =at once
• inhabit = to live in a place
• inmate = prisoner
• jail = a prison
• last resort = the final place to stay
• penitentiary = prison
• racketeer = someone who earns money through crime and other illegal activities
• reputation = opinion that people have or had about something
• residence = a place to live
• self-mutilation =to damage your body by cutting out parts of it
• serve time = to be in prison
• sinister = threatening, dangerous, bad
• solitary (confinement) = to stay in a prison cell completely alone
• spirit = ghost
• suicide = to kill yourself
• torture = to hurt someone so that they give you information
• windswept = windy because there are not many trees to protect the island