“Mais pardon, Commandant,” said the surveillant, as he threw the door open. “There have been two others, but they did not come across the world to see the prison, and they stayed a good deal longer than monsieur would care to do.”
“No doubt,” said I; and with that we crossed the Threshold of Lost Footsteps.
As the door swung to behind me I found myself in a long rectangular courtyard, one side of which was almost filled by a row of long, white buildings fronting endways on to the court, with a door at the end and small windows along the side.
At the further end, to the right hand, there was another door in the high, white wall, of which I was to learn the use later on, for the quadrangle which we were crossing is to the convicts of Ile Nou what the Place de la Roquette was lately to the Parisians—the Field of Blood, the Place of Execution.
The Commandant apologised for not being able to invite me to assist at the spectacle, as there was no patient available. I should see shortly a forçat awaiting trial for murder, but it would be some time before he could be tried, and then there would be the ratification of the sentence.
I should, of course, have assisted at such a spectacle if it had been possible; but I had the advantage of hearing a simple, but none the less graphic, description of an execution at Ile Nou from the lips of one who had more than once been an eye-witness of the dread ceremony; and this I will reproduce hereafter not only because of its dramatic interest, but because it is so absolutely different from anything ever heard of in England.
After we had inspected the cases, or dormitories, where the convicts of the third, or lowest, class sleep on sloping wooden shelves, with one foot manacled to an iron bar running the whole length of the long room, we went through other gates and walls into the central prison—the Prison Cellulaire—the heart and centre of the vast organisation.
Here I might have fancied myself in a somewhat old-fashioned English prison. Here there were no convicts smoking cigarettes or chatting at their work while their guardians smoked theirs and chatted also. The chill of silence cut down through the warmth of the tropic morning as the iron gates clashed to, and the heavy bolts shot back. Underfoot, black stone or cement pavement; around, white walls and two tiers of little black doors, the upper fronted by stone balconies and iron rails.
