After a few more remarks of a very personal and pungent nature the little fellow marched off with a delicious swagger and an heroical air. I at once turned to the warder and asked, "Who is that little fellow?" "The Governor!" he gasped out. "If he had only heard you!" and then followed a pantomime that implied something very dreadful. Then I marched off to the doctor, and next to the chaplain, who (knowing who I was) asked me if I could read and write, to which I meekly replied, "Yes, sir;" but apparently being doubtful upon the point he gave me a book. Opening it and pretending to read, I said in a solemn tone of voice: "When time and place adhere write me down an ass." He took the book from me, looked at the open page, gazed solemnly in my face with a funny wagging of his head, as much as to say, "you will come to no good," and followed the little major.
Then my cicerone took me into the main building, filled up to the brim with what seemed to be little brick and stone boxes, and, halting in front of one, said, "This is your cell." Looking around to see if it was safe to talk, he began to question me rapidly about my case, and getting no satisfaction he wound up the questioning with the remark: "Well, you tried to take all our money over to America." Then, becoming confidential, he told me what wicked fellows the other prisoners were, chiefly because they went to the Governor and reported the officers, charging them with maltreatment and bullying particularly, and knocking them about generally. Of course, the warders never did such things, but were really of a very lamblike and gentle nature. In order to back up their lies the prisoners would knock their own heads against the walls and then swear by everything good that some one of the warders had done it. I said, perhaps he had.
Well, he said, perhaps an officer might give a man "a little clip," but never so as to hurt him, and "only in fun, you know." I felt at the time that I would never learn to appreciate Chatham "fun," but on the very next day I was convinced of it when a man named Farrier pulled out from his waistband a piece of rag, and, unrolling it, produced two of his front teeth with the information that a certain warder had struck him with his fist in the mouth and knocked them out.
But to return to my narrative. After many "wise saws and modern instances," he locked me up in the little brick and stone box and departed, having first informed me that I "would go out to labor in the morning."
I looked about my little box with a mixture of curiosity and consternation, for the thought smote me with blinding force that for long years that little box—eight feet six inches in length, seven feet in height and five feet in width, with its floor and roof of stone—would be my only home—would be! must be! and no power could avert my fate.
On the small iron shelf I found a tin dish used by some previous occupant, and smeared inside and out with gruel. There being no water in my jug, when the men came in for dinner, I, in my innocence, asked one of the officers for some water to wash the dish. He looked at me with great contempt and said: "You are a precious flat; lick it off, man. Before long you won't waste gruel by washing your tin dish. You won't be here many days and want to use water to clean your pint."
After dinner I saw the men marched out to labor, and was amazed to see their famished, wolfish looks—thin, gaunt and almost disguised out of all human resemblance by their ill-fitting, mud-covered garments and mud-splashed faces and hands. I myself was kept in, but the weary, almost ghastly spectre march I had witnessed constantly haunted me, and I said, "Will I ever resemble them?" And youthful spirit and pride rushed to the front and cried, "Never!"
Night and supper (eight ounces of brown bread) came at length, and I rose up from my meal cheerful and resolute to meet the worst, be it what it might short of deliberate persecution, with a stout heart and faith that at last all would be well.
In the morning I arose, had my breakfast (nine ounces of brown bread and one pint of gruel), and was eager to learn what this "labor" meant. I was prepared for much, but not for the grim reality. I had been ordered to join eighty-two party—a brickmaking party, but working in the "mud districts." So we, along with 1,200 others, marched out to our work, and as soon as we were outside of the prison grounds I saw a sight that, while it explained the mud-splashed appearance of my spectral array, was enough to daunt any man doomed to join in the game. Mud, mud everywhere, with groups of weary men with shovel, or shovel and barrow, working in it. A sort of road had been made over the mud with ashes and cinders, and our party of twenty-two men, with five other parties, moved steadily on for about a mile until we came to the clay banks or pits. Fortunately we had a very good officer by the name of James. He wanted the work done, and used his tongue pretty freely; still he was a man who would speak the truth, and treated his men as well as he dared to do under the brutal regime ruling in Chatham. He speedily told me off to a barrow and spade, and I was fully enlisted as barrow-and-spade man to Her Majesty.