“Your friends, now. Who are they?” he sneered.
“One will do to start with. His Excellency General von Eckerstein of the German Legation at Petersburg. I wish him to know that you have tried to starve me to submit to your infernal bullying.”
“Insolent English beast,” he roared, completely losing his head in his fury. “Take the liar away.”
“I shan’t always be a prisoner,” I cried, as the man seized me. “But I shall remember that insult until I’ve made you swallow your words.” I was nearly as furious as he; but I had no time to say more, for the men took their cue from him and hustled me violently out of the room.
They passed on word that I might be ill treated with impunity; and I had a very rough and tumble time indeed while being carried to one of the gaols.
With the minor police and gaol officials in Russian Poland, the ill-treatment of prisoners is a carefully studied art; and they amused themselves congenially with me. Twenty times on that short journey I had to put the greatest restraint on myself to resist the temptation to do what they strove to goad me to do—to commit some act of violence which would have given them the excuse they sought to half batter me to death.
As it was I was hustled, struck and kicked; my clothes were nearly torn off my back, and every foul epithet which Russian and Polish malice could think of was spat at me with official brutality and contemptuousness.
I kept my head, however. I was tough enough to bear a good deal of ill-treatment; I had often taken much worse punishment in the boxing ring, and I had played football in America; so I held my temper back for the man who was the real cause of it all.
They flung me at length into a cell and locked the door upon me with a last gibe that the English were dirty cowards, and I the meanest skunk of them all.
I understood that day how men are made murderers. I brooded over my wrongs and nursed my rage against the bully who was responsible for this treatment, until if we had stood face to face I know I should have found delight in dragging him down and choking the life out of him. A fierce desire to fight him and punish him took possession of me; and for an hour or two hunger, thirst, injustice, everything was forgotten in that all but insane craving for revenge.