With great relief I learn that "Crazy Smithy" is not dead. He will recover, the rangeman assures me. The doctor bandaged the man's wounds, and then the prisoner, still unconscious, was dragged to the dungeon. Little by little I glean his story from my informant. Smith has been insane, at times violently, ever since his imprisonment, about four years ago. His "partner," Burns, has also become deranged through worry over his sentence of twenty-five years. His madness assumed such revolting expression that the authorities caused his commitment to the insane asylum. But Smith remains on "crank row," the Warden insisting that he is shamming to gain an opportunity to escape.
IV
The rare snatches of conversation with the old rangeman are events in the monotony of the solitary. Owing to the illness of Bob, communication with my friends is almost entirely suspended. In the forced idleness the hours grow heavy and languid, the days drag in unvarying sameness. By violent efforts of will I strangle the recurring thought of my long sentence, and seek forgetfulness in reading. Volume after volume passes through my hands, till my brain is steeped with the printed word. Page by page I recite the history of the Holy Church, the lives of the Fathers and the Saints, or read aloud, to hear a human voice, the mythology of Greece and India, mingling with it, for the sake of variety, a few chapters from Mill and Spencer. But in the midst of an intricate passage in the "Unknowable," or in the heart of a difficult mathematical problem, I suddenly become aware of my pencil drawing familiar figures on the library slate: 22 × 12 = 264. What is this, I wonder. And immediately I proceed, in semiconscious manner, to finish the calculation:
264 × 30 = 7,920 days.
7,920 × 24 = 190,080 hours.
190,080 × 60 = 11,404,800 minutes.
11,404,800 × 60 = 684,288,000 seconds.
But the next moment I am aghast at the realization that my computation allows only 30 days per month, whereas the year consists of 365, sometimes even of 366 days. And again I repeat the process, multiplying 22 by 365, and am startled to find that I have almost 700,000,000 seconds to pass in the solitary. From the official calendar alongside of the rules the cheering promise faces me, Good conduct shortens time. But I have been repeatedly reported and punished—they will surely deprive me of the commutation. With great care I figure out my allowance: one month on the first year, one on the second; two on the third and fourth; three on the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth; four months' "good time" on each succeeding year. I shall therefore have to serve fifteen years and three months in this place, and then eleven months in the workhouse. I have been here now two years. It still leaves me 14 years and 2 months, or more than 5,170 days. Appalled by the figures, I pace the cell in agitation. It is hopeless! It is folly to expect to survive such a sentence, especially in view of the Warden's persecution, and the petty tyranny of the keepers.
Thoughts of suicide and escape, wild fancies of unforeseen developments in the world at large that will somehow result in my liberation, all struggle in confusion, leaving me faint and miserable. My absolute isolation holds no promise of deliverance; the days of illness and suffering fill me with anguish. With a sharp pang I observe the thinning of my hair. The evidence of physical decay rouses the fear of mental collapse, insanity.... I shudder at the terrible suggestion, and lash myself into a fever of irritation with myself, the rangeman, and every passing convict, my heart seething with hatred of the Warden, the guards, the judge, and that unembodied, shapeless, but inexorable and merciless, thing—the world. In the moments of reacting calm I apply myself to philosophy and science, determinedly, with the desperation born of horror. But the dread ghost is ever before me; it follows me up and down the cell, mocks me with the wild laughter of "Crazy Smith" in the stillness of the night, and with the moaning and waking of my neighbor suddenly gone mad.