With this he climbed up on a box, and reaching up behind a series of steam pipes, he produced a half-bar of white soap and a towel of coarse fabric, but clean and ample. Lem then busied himself with the bath, which was sunken into the concrete floor. As this new-made friend talked along, trying to acquaint Lem with the rules of the prison, he noticed that the boy fumbled, and hesitated, and was plainly abashed when it came to divesting himself of his clothes. Last Time thoughtfully left the mountaineer to himself, saying:
"I'll help Hoggie watch for old Caladadac—you can wash your hair if you want to—that soap is O. K."
Some fifteen minutes later, when Lem had concluded his hasty bath and joined his conductor at the door of the bath house, a high-keyed bell suddenly pealed out. It was the first familiar sound Lem had heard since he left the mountains.
"That's the recall," said Last Time. "Stay back in the door a minute and you'll see the file come out—they've stopped work now—it's four o'clock."
The celerity with which these convicts got out of the shops was remarkable. Hardly had the tower bell ceased when five long rows of stripes stood ready to march. The guards each blew a mouth-whistle in turn, and the columns moved across the plaza toward the wash-shed like a great dragon with hundreds of legs. Then out of the wash-shed the columns crawled, bent around the dungeon-house, and marched into the big dining hall, with the scraping rise and fall of the lock-step—a peculiar, sinister sound.
Lem had peeped out at the bath-house door upon this spectacle with awesome eyes. He stood in open-mouthed wonder, and was aroused only when Last Time spoke and touched his arm.
"The night bull 'll come on now, and he'll be hollerin' for me—we better git along," he said. "You won't eat with them men. You'll git yours in the dining hall inside."
Upon reaching the cell-house, Last Time conducted Lem to the tables at the front end of the basement corridor where the Court prisoners were already at supper, and then left him. A soup-bowl, filled with a substance that at least resembled coffee; a plate of beans, and a thick piece of bread were placed in front of Lem by a convict waiter.
Lem felt at the moment that he never again would want to eat anything. Not only was his appetite wholly gone, but the mere sight of this food was nauseating, although he had not tasted anything since he had eaten breakfast at home the day before.
While he sat looking about him with lugubrious eyes, the man next to him—an uncouth individual indeed—whispered surreptitiously: