Death was a million times preferable to existence in such a hell of life as this!
CHAPTER XXXII
A HUNDRED LASHES
I WAS not without apprehension that, as soon as the drunkards and rowdies woke up, there would be some renewal of the night’s disturbances, with trouble to follow for the women and for us who had kept watch over them.
But the anticipation was unfounded. The men were too ill to make trouble. The fearful atmosphere they had breathed, combined with the effects of their intoxication, had sapped alike their strength and their energy. Listless, sick both in mind and body, crushed in spirit and utterly downcast, they kept apart from us and huddled together in a compact companionship of weary, lifeless, dejected wretchedness.
Several of those at our end of the prison, men and women alike, were in much the same condition. Daylight appeared to add to their sufferings, instead of diminishing it. In the dim gas light they had been spared the sight of the other’s condition; but it was revealed to them now and made them the more conscious of their own evil plight. The pestilential atmosphere had also enfeebled them; and the frail little Pia and her strong helpmate were hard put to it to keep them from giving way. Many of them fainted, gasping piteously for air; and Pia asked me to get the men to help in holding one or two of them up to the windows that they might breathe fresh air in place of the pestilence-laden atmosphere of the gaol.
The men agreed readily, although themselves greatly weakened by the night’s experiences, and I had just laid down one woman whom a companion had helped me to revive in this way, when he began to speak of Pia; praising her courage, her endurance and her resource.
“She is a little heroine and will be missed by our friends,” he said, when I echoed his praises warmly. “I hope they can prove nothing against her. How long have you known her?”
“I saw her for the first time here.”
“She is heart and soul in our cause and one of the staunchest workers and the bravest.”
“What cause is yours, my friend?”