I left the side of the dead prisoner and accompanied him back to my own cell.
I would have preferred death ten thousand times, for I knew, too well, that for the Russian convict is reserved that punishment which is tantamount to death by slow torture—a living tomb in the quicksilver mines beyond Tomsk. When sent under the earth he never again sees the sunlight or breathes the fresh air, until a year or so afterwards when he is brought to the surface to die.
Racked by the frightful pain which quicksilver produces, gaunt as skeletons, and with hair and eyebrows dropping off, convicts are kept at labour under the lash by taskmasters who have orders not to spare them, working eighteen hours at a stretch, and sleeping the remaining six in holes in the rock—mere kennels, into which they must crawl.
A sentence of Siberian hard labour always means death, for the Government are well aware it is an absolute impossibility to live longer than five years in such horrible torture in the depths of the earth.
To this terrible existence was I consigned. Was it surprising, therefore, that I hoped—nay, longed—for death instead?
Chapter Thirteen.
Graven on the Wall.
I walked back to my cell as one in a dream.