We stood now on the rim of the crater, looking straight into the inferno. By means of the dull light that struggled through the grimy, grated windows, I discovered that we were in a corridor having an iron floor that sprang up and down under our feet. This was flanked by a line of steel cages—huge beast-dens really—reaching to the ceiling. In each of these cages was a small, double-barred gate.
These dens were filled with men and boys; some with faces thrust through the bars, some with hands and arms stretched out as if for air; one hung half-way up the bars, clinging with hands and feet apart, as if to get a better hold and better view. I had seen dens like these before: the man-eating Bengal tiger at the London Zoo lives in one of them.
The Warden, who was standing immediately behind the attendant, stepped forward and shook Marny's hand. I discharged my obligations with a nod. I had never been in a place like this before, and the horror of its surroundings overcame me. I misjudged the Warden, no doubt. That this man might have a wife who loved him and little children who clung to his neck, and that underneath his hard, forbidding exterior a heart could beat with any tenderness, never occurred to me. As I looked him over with a half-shrinking glance, I became aware of a slash indenting his pock-marked cheek that might have been made by a sabre cut—was, probably, for it takes a brave man to be a warden; a massive head set on big shoulders; a square chin, the jaw hinged like a burglar's jimmy; and two keen, restless, elephant eyes.
But it was his right ear that absorbed my attention—or rather, what was left of his right ear. Only the point of it stuck up; the rest was clipped as clean as a rat-terrier's. Some fight to a finish, I thought; some quick upper-cut of the razor of a frenzied negro writhing under the viselike grasp of this man-gorilla with arms and hands of steel; or some sudden whirl of a stiletto, perhaps, which had missed his heart and taken his ear. I did not ask then, and I do not know now. It was a badge of courage, whatever it was—a badge which thrilled and horrified me. As I looked at the terrible mutilation, I could but recall the hideous fascination that overcame Josiane, the heroine of Hugo's great novel, "The Man Who Laughs," when she first caught sight of Gwynplaine's mouth—slit from ear to ear by the Comprachicos. The outrage on the Warden was not so grotesque, but the effect was the same.
I moved along the corridor and stood before the beasts. One, an old man in a long white beard, leathery, sun-tanned face and hooked nose, clasped the bars with both hands, gazing at us intently. I recognized his kind the moment I looked at him. He was like my Jonathan Gordon, my old fisherman who lived up in the Franconia Notch. His coarse, homespun clothes, dyed brown with walnut-shells, slouch hat crowning his shock of gray hair, and hickory shirt open at the throat, only heightened the resemblance; especially the hat canted over one eye. Why he wore the hat in such a place I could not understand, unless to be ready for departure when his summons came.
There were eight other beasts besides this old man in the same cage, one a boy of twenty, who leaned against the iron wall with his hands in his pockets, his eyes following my every movement. I noticed a new blue patch on one of his knees, which his mother, doubtless, had sewn with her own hands, her big-rimmed spectacles on her nose, the tallow dip lighting the log cabin. I recognized the touch. And the boy. I used to go swimming with one just like him, forty years ago, in an old swimming-hole in the back pasture, and hunt for honey that the bumblebees had stored under the bank.
The old man with the beard and the canting hat looked into my eyes keenly, but he did not speak. He had nothing to say, perhaps. Something human had moved before him, that was all; something that could come and go at its pleasure and break the monotony of endless hours.
"How long have you been here?" I asked, lowering my voice and stepping closer to the bars.
Somehow I did not want the others to hear. It was almost as though I were talking to Jonathan—my dear Jonathan—and he behind bars!
"Eleven months and three days. Reckon I be the oldest"—and he looked about him as if for confirmation. "Yes, reckon I be."