Странник по звездам / The Star-Rover - стр. 3

“Now,” he said, while I gasped and swallowed my pain, “tell me all about it, Standing.”

“I don’t know anything about what has happened…”, I began.

Again he lifted me in the air and crashed me down into the chair.

“No nonsense, Standing,” he warned. “Tell the truth about the prison-break.”

“I don’t know anything,” I protested.

Once again I was lifted and smashed back into the chair. The chair was demolished. Another chair was brought, and soon that chair was demolished. Even more chairs were brought, and the eternal questioning about the prison-break went on.

When Warden Atherton grew tired, Captain relieved him; and then a guard took Captain’s place in smashing me down into the chair.

I do not know how many chairs were broken by my body. I was dragged back to the dark. There, when I became conscious, I found a stool in my dungeon.

And ever the examination went on. Ever, one at a time, convicts were dragged away and dragged or carried back again. They reported that Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie, exhausted by their efforts, relieved each other every two hours. While one slept, the other examined. And they slept in their clothes in the very room in which strong man after strong man was being broken.

And hour by hour, in the dark dungeons, our madness of torment grew. I suffered equally with the others from pain and thirst; but added to my suffering was the fact that I remained conscious to the sufferings of the others.

Don’t you see? Our truth, the very truth we told, was our damnation. When forty men told the same things, Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie could only conclude that our words were a lie.

It was winter. We had no blankets in the dungeons. In the end they gave us water. I shall skip the rest of what happened in the dungeons. 25 per cent of the forty have died in the succeeding six years.

After my five years in solitary, when they took me away from San Quentin for my trial, I saw Skysail Jack[21]. His hair had turned white. He was prematurely old. His cheeks were sunken. His hands shook. He tottered as he walked. And his eyes blurred with tears as he recognized me.

“You’re a good one, Standing,” he said. “You told them nothing.”

“But I never knew, Jack,” I whispered back—I was compelled to whisper, for I had lost my voice.

They are going to take me out and hang me in a little while—no, not for killing Professor Haskell. I got life-imprisonment for that. They are going to hang me because I was found guilty of assault.

I believe I made a man’s nose bleed. I never saw it bleed, but that was the evidence. Thurston[22], his name was. He was a guard at San Quentin. He weighed one hundred and seventy pounds and was in good health. I weighed under ninety pounds, and was blind as a bat from the long darkness.

I struck Thurston on the nose and made it bleed when he got in my way and tried to catch me. And so they are going to hang me. It is the written law of the State of California.

Life is strange. I warned you I had many things to write about. I shall now return to my narrative. They gave me twenty-four hours in the jacket to think everything over. Then I was brought before the Board a second time. What could I do? They told me I was a liar. They told me I was a hard case, a dangerous man, a moral degenerate, the criminal of the century. They told me many other things, and then they carried me away to the solitary cells. I was put into Number One cell. In Number Five lay Ed Morrell. In Number Twelve lay