A POUND OF DRY BREAD
and unlimited water and considerable salt was the bill of fare, my revolted appetite refused to be led into such pastures. As before, my rations were eagerly seized by my fellow-prisoners.
When Turnkey Allan came in for the working squad after breakfast, he chose me as a member of it. This frightened me almost to death. I had visions of men working on the roads in chains, and I said tremulously that I wasn’t able to work. “Oh, you’ll feel better outside. You won’t have to work very hard.” So out I went wheeling a barrow with a pick and shovel in it. The squad were engaged in taking clay out of a bank on the hill beside the jail, and were wheeling it down to the road. No one who has not undergone captivity, can understand the feelings of a prisoner. It was a lovely summer day this, and as I looked from the brow of the hill up and down the wide-reaching valley of the Don, I could not believe that I could not obey my own inclinations, but was bound to submit my goings and comings to the will of the two turnkeys who were in charge of the squad. I was very weak, and I thought my heart must break.
“Here, B⸺,” said one of the turnkeys named Norris, “take hold of this wheelbarrow.”
They were very considerate to me, giving me very small loads of clay, but nevertheless in half an hour my hands were so blistered that the handles of the infernal vehicle seemed as if they were red-hot. At length I fell on my knees from pure exhaustion—prostrated in mind and body.
“He’s not able to work,” said one of the other prisoners.
“Let him lie on the bank,” said one of the turnkeys to the other. “He’ll be better out here than inside.”
And he was right. I lay in the warm sun, and presently began to experience a feeling of hunger. Just as I was experiencing this hopeful sensation I heard some one say on the bank below, “Where is that man B⸺?”