The Jacket E-Book

Jack London

• Herausgeber: ShadowPOET
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The Jack Rover tells the story of San Quentin death-row inmate Darrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life —and long stretches in a straitjacket— by withdrawing into vivid dreams of past lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and an Englishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment of Jack London’s friend Ed Morrell, this is one of the author’s most complex and original works and also his last one.

Leseprobe

TheJacket(TheStar-Rover)By

JackLondon

Publisher: ShadowPOET

CHAPTERI

All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places. I have beenaware of other persons in me.—Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader thatis to be.Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speakofwillberememberedasanexperienceofyourchildhood.Youwerethennotfixed, not crystallized.You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness andanidentityintheprocessofforming—ay,offormingandforgetting.

You have forgotten much, my reader, and yet, as you read these lines, youremember dimly the hazy vistas of other times and places into which yourchildeyespeered.Theyseemdreamstoyouto-day.Yet,iftheyweredreams,dreamed then, whence the substance of them?Our dreams are grotesquelycompounded of the things we know. The stuff of our sheerest dreams is thestuff of our experience. As a child, a wee child, you dreamed you fell greatheights; you dreamed you flew through the air as things of the air fly; youwere vexed by crawling spiders and many-legged creatures of the slime; youheard other voices, saw other faces nightmarishly familiar, and gazed uponsunrises and sunsets other than you know now, looking back, you ever lookedupon.

Verywell.Thesechildglimpsesareofother-worldness,ofother-lifeness,of things that you had never seen in this particular world of your particularlife.Then whence?Other lives?Other worlds?Perhaps, when you havereadallthatIshallwrite,youwillhavereceivedanswerstotheperplexitiesIhave propounded to you, and that you yourself, ere you came to read me,propoundedtoyourself.

***

Wordsworthknew.Hewasneitherseernorprophet,butjustordinarymanlikeyouoranyman.Whatheknew,youknow,anymanknows.Buthemostaptly stated it in his passage that begins “Not in utter nakedness, not in entireforgetfulness...”

Ah,truly,shadesoftheprison-housecloseaboutus,thenew-bornthings,and all too soon do we forget.And yet, when we were new-born we didremember other times and places. We, helpless infants in arms or creepingquadruped-like on the floor, dreamed our dreams of air-flight. Yes; and weendured the torment and torture of nightmare fears of dim and monstrousthings. We new-born infants, without experience, were born with fear, withmemoryoffear;andmemoryisexperience.

Asformyself,atthebeginningsofmyvocabulary,atsotenderaperiod

thatIstillmadehungernoisesandsleepnoises,yeteventhendidIknowthatIhad been a star-rover. Yes, I, whose lips had never lisped the word “king,”remembered that I had once been the son of a king. More—I remembered thatonceIhadbeenaslaveandasonofaslave,andwornanironcollarroundmyneck.

Stillmore.WhenIwasthree,andfour,andfiveyearsofage,Iwasnotyet

I. I was a mere becoming, a flux of spirit not yet cooled solid in the mould ofmy particular flesh and time and place. In that period all that I had ever beenin ten thousand lives before strove in me, and troubled the flux of me, in theefforttoincorporateitselfinmeandbecomeme.

Silly, isn’t it? But remember, my reader, whom I hope to have travel farwith me through time and space—remember, please, my reader, that I havethoughtmuchonthesematters,thatthroughbloodynightsandsweatsofdarkthat lasted years-long, I have been alone with my many selves to consult andcontemplate my many selves. I have gone through the hells of all existencestobringyounewswhichyouwillsharewithmeinacasualcomfortablehourovermyprintedpage.

So,toreturn,Isay,duringtheagesofthreeandfourandfive,Iwasnotyet

I. I was merely becoming as I took form in the mould of my body, and all themighty,indestructiblepastwroughtinthemixtureofmetodeterminewhattheform of that becoming would be.It was not my voice that cried out in thenight in fear of things known, which I, forsooth, did not and could not know.The same with my childish angers, my loves, and my laughters. Other voicesscreamed through my voice, the voices of men and women aforetime, of allshadowy hosts of progenitors.And the snarl of my anger was blended withthesnarlsofbeastsmoreancientthanthemountains,andthevocalmadnessofmychildhysteria,withalltheredofitswrath,waschordedwiththeinsensate,stupidcriesofbeastspre-Adamicandprogeologicintime.

And there the secret is out.The red wrath!It has undone me in this, mypresent life. Because of it, a few short weeks hence, I shall be led from thiscell to a high place with unstable flooring, graced above by a well-stretchedrope; and there they will hang me by the neck until I am dead. The red wrathalways has undone me in all my lives; for the red wrath is my disastrouscatastrophic heritage from the time of the slimy things ere the world wasprime.

***

ItistimethatIintroducemyself.Iamneitherfoolnorlunatic.Iwantyouto know that, in order that you will believe the things I shall tell you.I amDarrell Standing. Some few of you who read this will know me immediately.Buttothemajority,whoareboundtobestrangers,letmeexpositmyself.

EightyearsagoIwasProfessorofAgronomicsintheCollegeofAgricultureof the University of California. Eight years ago the sleepy little universitytown of Berkeley was shocked by the murder of Professor Haskell in one ofthelaboratoriesoftheMiningBuilding.DarrellStandingwasthemurderer.

I am Darrell Standing.I was caught red-handed.Now the right and thewrong of this affair with Professor Haskell I shall not discuss. It was purely aprivate matter.The point is, that in a surge of anger, obsessed by thatcatastrophic red wrath that has cursed me down the ages, I killed my fellowprofessor. The court records show that I did; and, for once, I agree with thecourtrecords.

No; I am not to be hanged for his murder. I received a life-sentence for mypunishment.I was thirty-six years of age at the time.I am now forty-fouryears old.I have spent the eight intervening years in the California StatePrison of San Quentin.Five of these years I spent in the dark.Solitaryconfinement,theycallit.Menwhoendureit,callitlivingdeath.Butthroughthese five years of death-in-life I managed to attain freedom such as few menhave ever known.Closest-confined of prisoners, not only did I range theworld, but I ranged time. They who immured me for petty years gave to me,all unwittingly, the largess of centuries. Truly, thanks to Ed Morrell, I havehad five years of star-roving.But Ed Morrell is another story.I shall tell youabouthimalittlelater.IhavesomuchtotellIscarceknowhowtobegin.

Well, a beginning.I was born on a quarter-section in Minnesota.Mymother was the daughter of an immigrant Swede.Her name was HildaTonnesson.My father was Chauncey Standing, of old American stock.Hetraced back to Alfred Standing, an indentured servant, or slave if you please,whowastransportedfromEnglandtotheVirginiaplantationsinthedaysthatwere even old when the youthful Washington went a-surveying in thePennsylvaniawilderness.

A son of Alfred Standing fought in the War of the Revolution; a grandson, in the War of 1812. There have been no wars since in which the Standingshave not been represented.I, the last of the Standings, dying soon withoutissue, fought as a common soldier in the Philippines, in our latest war, and todo so I resigned, in the full early ripeness of career, my professorship in theUniversity of Nebraska. Good heavens, when I so resigned I was headed fortheDeanshipoftheCollegeofAgricultureinthatuniversity—I,thestar-rover,thered-bloodedadventurer,thevagabondishCainofthecenturies,themilitantpriest of remotest times, the moon-dreaming poet of ages forgotten and to-dayunrecordedinman’shistoryofman!

AndhereIam,myhandsdyedredinMurderers’Row,intheStatePrisonofFolsom,awaitingthedaydecreedbythemachineryofstatewhenthe

servants of the state will lead me away into what they fondly believe is thedark—the dark they fear; the dark that gives them fearsome and superstitiousfancies; the dark that drives them, drivelling and yammering, to the altars oftheirfear-created,anthropomorphicgods.

No; I shall never be Dean of any college of agriculture.And yet I knewagriculture.It was my profession.I was born to it, reared to it, trained to it;and I was a master of it.It was my genius.I can pick the high-percentagebutter-fat cow with my eye and let the Babcock Tester prove the wisdom ofmy eye.I can look, not at land, but at landscape, and pronounce the virtuesand the shortcomings of the soil.Litmus paper is not necessary when Idetermine a soil to be acid or alkali. I repeat, farm-husbandry, in its highestscientific terms, was my genius, and is my genius. And yet the state, whichincludesallthecitizensofthestate,believesthatitcanblotoutthiswisdomofmineinthefinaldarkbymeansofaropeaboutmyneckandtheabruptivejerkof gravitation—this wisdom of mine that was incubated through themillenniums, and that was well-hatched ere the farmed fields of Troy wereeverpasturedbytheflocksofnomadshepherds!

Corn?Who else knows corn?There is my demonstration at Wistar,whereby I increased the annual corn-yield of every county in Iowa by half amillion dollars. This is history. Many a farmer, riding in his motor-car to-day,knows who made possible that motor-car. Many a sweet-bosomed girl andbright-browed boy, poring over high-school text-books, little dreams that ImadethathighereducationpossiblebymycorndemonstrationatWistar.

And farm management! I know the waste of superfluous motion withoutstudying a moving picture record of it, whether it be farm or farm-hand, thelayoutofbuildingsorthelayoutofthefarm-hands’labour.Thereismyhandbook and tables on the subject. Beyond the shadow of any doubt, at thispresentmoment,ahundredthousandfarmersareknottingtheirbrowsoveritsspread pages ere they tap out their final pipe and go to bed. And yet, so farwas I beyond my tables, that all I needed was a mere look at a man to knowhis predispositions, his co-ordinations, and the index fraction of his motion-wastage.

And here I must close this first chapter of my narrative. It is nine o’clock,andinMurderers’Rowthatmeanslightsout.Evennow,Ihearthesofttreadof the gum-shoed guard as he comes to censure me for my coal-oil lamp stillburning.Asifthemerelivingcouldcensurethedoomedtodie!

CHAPTERII

I am Darrell Standing. They are going to take me out and hang me prettysoon. In the meantime I say my say, and write in these pages of the othertimesandplaces.

After my sentence, I came to spend the rest of my “natural life” in theprison of San Quentin.I proved incorrigible.An incorrigible is a terriblehuman being—at least such is the connotation of “incorrigible” in prisonpsychology.I became an incorrigible because I abhorred waste motion.Theprison, like all prisons, was a scandal and an affront of waste motion.Theyput me in the jute-mill.The criminality of wastefulness irritated me.Whyshould it not?Elimination of waste motion was my speciality.Before theinvention of steam or steam-driven looms three thousand years before, I hadrottedinprisoninoldBabylon;and,trustme,IspeakthetruthwhenIsaythatinthatancientdayweprisonerswovemoreefficientlyonhand-loomsthandidtheprisonersinthesteam-poweredloom-roomsofSanQuentin.

Thecrimeofwastewasabhorrent.Irebelled.Itriedtoshowtheguardsascore or so of more efficient ways.I was reported.I was given the dungeonand the starvation of light and food. I emerged and tried to work in the chaosof inefficiency of the loom-rooms.I rebelled.I was given the dungeon, plusthe strait-jacket. I was spread-eagled, and thumbed-up, and privily beaten bythe stupid guards whose totality of intelligence was only just sufficient toshowthemthatIwasdifferentfromthemandnotsostupid.

Two years of this witless persecution I endured. It is terrible for a man tobe tied down and gnawed by rats. The stupid brutes of guards were rats, andtheygnawedtheintelligenceofme,gnawedallthefinenervesofthequickofme and of the consciousness of me. And I, who in my past have been a mostvaliant fighter, in this present life was no fighter at all. I was a farmer, anagriculturist, a desk-tied professor, a laboratory slave, interested only in thesoilandtheincreaseoftheproductivenessofthesoil.

I fought in the Philippines because it was the tradition of the Standings tofight.I had no aptitude for fighting.It was all too ridiculous, the introducingof disruptive foreign substances into the bodies of little black men-folk. It waslaughable to behold Science prostituting all the might of its achievement andthewitofitsinventorstotheviolentintroducingofforeignsubstancesintothebodiesofblackfolk.

As I say, in obedience to the tradition of the Standings I went to war andfoundthatIhadnoaptitudeforwar.Sodidmyofficersfindmeout,becausethey made me a quartermaster’s clerk, and as a clerk, at a desk, I foughtthroughtheSpanish-AmericanWar.

So it was not because I was a fighter, but because I was a thinker, that Iwasenragedbythemotion-wastageoftheloom-roomsandwaspersecutedby

the guards into becoming an “incorrigible.”One’s brain worked and I waspunished for its working. As I told Warden Atherton, when my incorrigibilityhadbecomesonotoriousthathehadmeinonthecarpetinhisprivateofficetopleadwithme;asItoldhimthen:

“Itissoabsurd,mydearWarden,tothinkthatyourrat-throttlersofguardscanshakeoutofmybrainthethingsthatareclearanddefiniteinmybrain.

The whole organization of this prison is stupid. You are a politician. You canweave the political pull of San Francisco saloon-men and ward heelers into aposition of graft such as this one you occupy; but you can’t weave jute. Yourloom-roomsarefiftyyearsbehindthetimes”

But why continue the tirade?—for tirade it was. I showed him what a foolhewas,andasaresulthedecidedthatIwasahopelessincorrigible.

Give a dog a bad name—you know the saw. Very well. Warden Athertongave the final sanction to the badness of my name.I was fair game.Morethanoneconvict’sderelictionwasshuntedoffonme,andwaspaidforbymeinthedungeononbreadandwater,orinbeingtricedupbythethumbsonmytip-toes for long hours, each hour of which was longer than any life I haveeverlived.

Intelligent men are cruel.Stupid men are monstrously cruel.The guardsand the men over me, from the Warden down, were stupid monsters. Listen,and you shall learn what they did to me.There was a poet in the prison, aconvict,aweak-chinned,broad-browed,degeneratepoet.Hewasaforger.Hewas a coward.He was a snitcher.He was a stool—strange words for aprofessor of agronomics to use in writing, but a professor of agronomics maywelllearnstrangewordswhenpentinprisonforthetermofhisnaturallife.

This poet-forger’s name was Cecil Winwood.He had had priorconvictions, and yet, because he was a snivelling cur of a yellow dog, his lastsentence had been only for seven years. Good credits would materially reducethis time.My time was life.Yet this miserable degenerate, in order to gainseveral short years of liberty for himself, succeeded in adding a fair portion ofeternitytomyownlifetimeterm.

I shall tell what happened the other way around, for it was only after aweary period that I learned. This Cecil Winwood, in order to curry favourwiththeCaptainoftheYard,andthencetheWarden,thePrisonDirectors,theBoard of Pardons, and the Governor of California, framed up a prison-break.Now note three things: (a) Cecil Winwood was so detested by his fellow-convicts that they would not have permitted him to bet an ounce of BullDurham on a bed-bug race—and bed-bug racing was a great sport with theconvicts; (b) I was the dog that had been given a bad name: (c) for his frame-up,CecilWinwoodneededthedogswithbadnames,thelifetimers,the

desperateones,theincorrigibles.

But the lifers detested Cecil Winwood, and, when he approached themwith his plan of a wholesale prison-break, they laughed at him and turnedaway with curses for the stool that he was.But he fooled them in the end,forty of the bitterest-wise ones in the pen.He approached them again andagain. He told of his power in the prison by virtue of his being trusty in theWarden’soffice,andbecauseofthefactthathehadtherunofthedispensary.

“Show me,” said Long Bill Hodge, a mountaineer doing life for trainrobbery,andwhosewholesoulforyearshadbeenbentonescapinginordertokillthecompanioninrobberywhohadturnedstate’sevidenceonhim.

Cecil Winwood accepted the test. He claimed that he could dope theguardsthenightofthebreak.

“Talkischeap,”saidLongBillHodge.“Whatwewantisthegoods.

Dope one of the guards to-night. There’s Barnum. He’s no good. He beat upthatcrazyChinkyesterdayinBughouseAlley—whenhewasoffduty,too.

He’s on the night watch.Dope him to-night an’ make him lose his job.Showme,andwe’lltalkbusinesswithyou.”

All this Long Bill told me in the dungeons afterward.Cecil Winwooddemurred against the immediacy of the demonstration.He claimed that hemusthavetimeinwhichtostealthedopefromthedispensary.Theygavehimthe time, and a week later he announced that he was ready. Forty hard-bittenlifers waited for the guard Barnum to go to sleep on his shift.And Barnumdid.Hewasfoundasleep,andhewasdischargedforsleepingonduty.

Of course, that convinced the lifers. But there was the Captain of the Yardto convince. To him, daily, Cecil Winwood was reporting the progress of thebreak—all fancied and fabricated in his own imagination. The Captain of theYarddemandedtobeshown.Winwoodshowedhim,andthefulldetailsoftheshowing I did not learn until a year afterward, so slowly do the secrets ofprisonintrigueleakout.

Winwoodsaidthatthefortymeninthebreak,inwhoseconfidencehewas,had already such power in the Prison that they were about to begin smugglinginautomaticpistolsbymeansoftheguardstheyhadboughtup.

“Showme,”theCaptainoftheYardmusthavedemanded.

Andtheforger-poetshowedhim.IntheBakery,nightworkwasaregularthing.One of the convicts, a baker, was on the first night-shift.He was astooloftheCaptainoftheYard,andWinwoodknewit.

“To-night,” he told the Captain, “Summerface will bring in a dozen ’44automatics.Onhisnexttimeoffhe’llbringintheammunition.Butto-night

he’llturntheautomaticsovertomeinthebakery.You’vegotagoodstoolthere.He’llmakeyouhisreportto-morrow.”

Now Summerface was a strapping figure of a bucolic guard who hailedfrom Humboldt County. He was a simple-minded, good-natured dolt and notabove earning an honest dollar by smuggling in tobacco for the convicts. Onthat night, returning from a trip to San Francisco, he brought in with himfifteen pounds of prime cigarette tobacco.He had done this before, anddelivered the stuff to Cecil Winwood.So, on that particular night, he, allunwitting,turnedthestuffovertoWinwoodinthebakery.Itwasabig,solid,paper-wrapped bundle of innocent tobacco.The stool baker, fromconcealment, saw the package delivered to Winwood and so reported to theCaptainoftheYardnextmorning.

Butinthemeantimethepoet-forger’stoo-livelyimaginationranawaywithhim. He was guilty of a slip that gave me five years of solitary confinementand that placed me in this condemned cell in which I now write. And all thetime I knew nothing about it.I did not even know of the break he hadinveigledthefortylifersintoplanning.Iknewnothing,absolutelynothing.

And the rest knew little. The lifers did not know he was giving them the cross.The Captain of the Yard did not know that the cross know was being workedon him.Summerface was the most innocent of all.At the worst, hisconscience could have accused him only of smuggling in some harmlesstobacco.

Andnowtothestupid,silly,melodramaticslipofCecilWinwood.Nextmorning, when he encountered the Captain of the Yard, he was triumphant.Hisimaginationtookthebitinitsteeth.

“Well,thestuffcameinallrightasyousaid,”thecaptainoftheYardremarked.

“Andenoughofittoblowhalftheprisonsky-high,”Winwoodcorroborated.

“Enoughofwhat?”theCaptaindemanded.

“Dynamiteanddetonators,”thefoolrattledon.“Thirty-fivepoundsofit.

YourstoolsawSummerfacepassitovertome.”

And right there the Captain of the Yard must have nearly died. I canactuallysympathizewithhim—thirty-fivepoundsofdynamitelooseintheprison.

TheysaythatCaptainJamie—thatwashisnickname—satdownandheldhisheadinhishands.

“Whereisitnow?”hecried.“Iwantit.Takemetoitatonce.”

AndrightthereCecilWinwoodsawhismistake.

“I planted it,” he lied—for he was compelled to lie because, being merelytobacco in small packages, it was long since distributed among the convictsalongthecustomarychannels.

“Verywell,”saidCaptainJamie,gettinghimselfinhand.“Leadmetoitatonce.”

But there was no plant of high explosives to lead him to. The thing did notexist,hadneverexistedsaveintheimaginationofthewretchedWinwood.

In a large prison like San Quentin there are always hiding-places forthings. And as Cecil Winwood led Captain Jamie he must have done somerapidthinking.

As Captain Jamie testified before the Board of Directors, and as Winwoodalso so testified, on the way to the hiding-place Winwood said that he and Ihadplantedthepowdertogether.

And I, just released from five days in the dungeons and eighty hours in thejacket; I, whom even the stupid guards could see was too weak to work in theloom-room;I,whohadbeengiventhedayofftorecuperate—fromtooterriblepunishment—I was named as the one who had helped hide the non-existentthirty-fivepoundsofhighexplosive!

Winwood led Captain Jamie to the alleged hiding-place. Of course theyfoundnodynamiteinit.

“MyGod!”Winwoodlied.“Standinghasgivenmethecross.He’sliftedtheplantandstoweditsomewhereelse.”

TheCaptainoftheYardsaidmoreemphaticthingsthan“MyGod!”Also,onthespurofthemomentbutcold-bloodedly,hetookWinwoodintohisownprivate office, looked the doors, and beat him up frightfully—all of whichcame out before the Board of Directors.But that was afterward.In themeantime, even while he took his beating, Winwood swore by the truth ofwhathehadtold.

What was Captain Jamie to do? He was convinced that thirty-five poundsofdynamitewerelooseintheprisonandthatfortydesperateliferswerereadyfor a break.Oh, he had Summerface in on the carpet, and, althoughSummerface insisted the package contained tobacco, Winwood swore it wasdynamiteandwasbelieved.

At this stage I enter or, rather, I depart, for they took me away out of thesunshine and the light of day to the dungeons, and in the dungeons and in thesolitarycells,outofthesunshineandthelightofday,Irottedforfiveyears.

I was puzzled. I had only just been released from the dungeons, and waslying pain-racked in my customary cell, when they took me back to thedungeon.

“Now,”saidWinwoodtoCaptainJamie,“thoughwedon’tknowwhereitis, the dynamite is safe. Standing is the only man who does know, and hecan’t pass the word out from the dungeon.The men are ready to make thebreak.We can catch them red-handed.It is up to me to set the time.I’ll tellthem two o’clock to-night and tell them that, with the guards doped, I’llunlock their cells and give them their automatics. If, at two o’clock to-night,you don’t catch the forty I shall name with their clothes on and wide awake,then, Captain, you can give me solitary for the rest of my sentence. And withStanding and the forty tight in the dungeons, we’ll have all the time in theworldtolocatethedynamite.”

“Ifwehavetoteartheprisondownstonebystone,”CaptainJamieaddedvaliantly.

That was six years ago. In all the intervening time they have never foundthat non-existent explosive, and they have turned the prison upside-down athousand times in searching for it.Nevertheless, to his last day in officeWarden Atherton believed in the existence of that dynamite. Captain Jamie,who is still Captain of the Yard, believes to this day that the dynamite issomewhere in the prison. Only yesterday, he came all the way up from SanQuentin to Folsom to make one more effort to get me to reveal the hiding-place.Iknowhewillneverbreatheeasyuntiltheyswingmeoff.

CHAPTERIII

AllthatdayIlayinthedungeoncudgellingmybrainsforthereasonofthisnew and inexplicable punishment.All I could conclude was that some stoolhad lied an infraction of the rules on me in order to curry favour with theguards.

Meanwhile Captain Jamie fretted his head off and prepared for the night,while Winwood passed the word along to the forty lifers to be ready for thebreak.And two hours after midnight every guard in the prison was underorders.Thisincludedtheday-shiftwhichshouldhavebeenasleep.Whentwoo’clock came, they rushed the cells occupied by the forty.The rush wassimultaneous.The cells were opened at the same moment, and withoutexception the men named by Winwood were found out of their bunks, fullydressed,andcrouchingjustinsidetheirdoors.Ofcourse,thiswasverification

absolute of all the fabric of lies that the poet-forger had spun for CaptainJamie.The forty lifers were caught in red-handed readiness for the break.What if they did unite, afterward, in averring that the break had been plannedby Winwood? The Prison Board of Directors believed, to a man, that the fortylied in an effort to save themselves. The Board of Pardons likewise believed,for, ere three months were up, Cecil Winwood, forger and poet, mostdespicableofmen,waspardonedout.

Oh, well, the stir, or the pen, as they call it in convict argot, is a trainingschool for philosophy. No inmate can survive years of it without having hadburst for him his fondest illusions and fairest metaphysical bubbles.Truthlives,wearetaught;murderwillout.Well,thisisademonstrationthatmurderdoesnotalwayscomeout.TheCaptainoftheYard,thelateWardenAtherton,the Prison Board of Directors to a man—all believe, right now, in theexistence of that dynamite that never existed save in the slippery-geared andalltoo-acceleratedbrainofthedegenerateforgerandpoet,CecilWinwood.

AndCecilWinwoodstilllives,whileI,ofallmenconcerned,theutterest,absolutist,innocentest,gotothescaffoldinafewshortweeks.

***

And now I must tell how entered the forty lifers upon my dungeonstillness.I was asleep when the outer door to the corridor of dungeonsclanged open and aroused me.“Some poor devil,” was my thought; and mynextthoughtwasthathewassurelygettinghis,asIlistenedtothescufflingoffeet, the dull impact of blows on flesh, the sudden cries of pain, the filth ofcurses, and the sounds of dragging bodies. For, you see, every man was man-handledallthelengthoftheway.

Dungeon-doorafterdungeon-doorclangedopen,andbodyafterbodywasthrust in, flung in, or dragged in.And continually more groups of guardsarrived with more beaten convicts who still were being beaten, and moredungeon-doors were opened to receive the bleeding frames of men who wereguiltyofyearningafterfreedom.

Yes,asIlookbackuponit,amanmustbegreatlyaphilosophertosurvivethecontinualimpactofsuchbrutishexperiencesthroughtheyearsandyears.

Iamsuchaphilosopher.Ihaveenduredeightyearsoftheirtorment,andnow,in the end, failing to get rid of me in all other ways, they have invoked themachineryofstatetoputaropearoundmyneckandshutoffmybreathbytheweight of my body. Oh, I know how the experts give expert judgment that thefall through the trap breaks the victim’s neck.And the victims, likeShakespeare’s traveller, never return to testify to the contrary. But we whohave lived in the stir know of the cases that are hushed in the prison crypts,wherethevictim’snecksarenotbroken.

It is a funny thing, this hanging of a man. I have never seen a hanging, butI have been told by eye-witnesses the details of a dozen hangings so that Iknow what will happen to me.Standing on the trap, leg-manacled and arm-manacled, the knot against the neck, the black cap drawn, they will drop medown until the momentum of my descending weight is fetched up abruptlyshort by the tautening of the rope. Then the doctors will group around me, andone will relieve another in successive turns in standing on a stool, his armspassed around me to keep me from swinging like a pendulum, his ear pressedclose to my chest, while he counts my fading heart-beats. Sometimes twentyminutes elapse after the trap is sprung ere the heart stops beating.Oh, trustme,theymakemostscientificallysurethatamanisdeadoncetheygethimonarope.

I still wander aside from my narrative to ask a question or two of society. Ihavearightsotowanderandsotoquestion,forinalittlewhiletheyaregoingto take me out and do this thing to me. If the neck of the victim be broken bythe alleged shrewd arrangement of knot and noose, and by the alleged shrewdcalculation of the weight of the victim and the length of slack, then why dothey manacle the arms of the victim? Society, as a whole, is unable to answerthis question.But I know why; so does any amateur who ever engaged in alynching bee and saw the victim throw up his hands, clutch the rope, and easethethrottleofthenooseabouthisnecksothathemightbreathe.

AnotherquestionIwillaskofthesmug,cotton-wooledmemberofsociety,whose soul has never strayed to the red hells. Why do they put the black capovertheheadandthefaceofthevictimeretheydrophimthroughthetrap?

Please remember that in a short while they will put that black cap over myhead.SoIhavearighttoask.Dothey,yourhang-dogs,Osmugcitizen,dothese your hang-dogs fear to gaze upon the facial horror of the horror theyperpetrateforyouandoursandatyourbehest?

PleaserememberthatIamnotaskingthisquestioninthetwelve-hundredthyear after Christ, nor in the time of Christ, nor in the twelve-hundredth yearbefore Christ.I, who am to be hanged this year, the nineteen-hundred-and-thirteenth after Christ, ask these questions of you who are assumably Christ’sfollowers, of you whose hang-dogs are going to take me out and hide my faceunder a black cloth because they dare not look upon the horror they do to mewhileIyetlive.

And now back to the situation in the dungeons.When the last guarddeparted and the outer door clanged shut, all the forty beaten, disappointedmen began to talk and ask questions. But, almost immediately, roaring like abullinordertobeheard,SkysailJack,agiantsailorofalifer,orderedsilencewhile a census could be taken.The dungeons were full, and dungeon bydungeon,inorderofdungeons,shoutedoutitsquotatotheroll-call.Thus,

everydungeonwasaccountedforasoccupiedbytrustedconvicts,sothattherewasnoopportunityforastooltobehiddenawayandlistening.

Ofme,only,weretheconvictsdubious,forIwastheonemanwhohadnotbeen in the plot.They put me through a searching examination.I could buttellthemhowIhadjustemergedfromdungeonandjacketinthemorning,andwithout rhyme or reason, so far as I could discover, had been put back in thedungeon after being out only several hours. My record as an incorrigible wasinmyfavour,andsoontheybegantotalk.

AsIlaythereandlistened,forthefirsttimeIlearnedofthebreakthathadbeen a-hatching.“Who had squealed?” was their one quest, and throughoutthe night the quest was pursued. The quest for Cecil Winwood was vain, andthesuspicionagainsthimwasgeneral.

“There’s only one thing, lads,” Skysail Jack finally said.“It’ll soon bemorning,andthenthey’lltakeusoutandgiveusbloodyhell.Wewerecaughtdeadtorightswithourclotheson.Winwoodcrossedusandsquealed.

They’re going to get us out one by one and mess us up. There’s forty of us.Any lyin’s bound to be found out. So each lad, when they sweat him, just tellsthetruth,thewholetruth,sohelphimGod.”

And there, in that dark hole of man’s inhumanity, from dungeon cell todungeon cell, their mouths against the gratings, the two-score lifers solemnlypledgedthemselvesbeforeGodtotellthetruth.

Little good did their truth-telling do them. At nine o’clock the guards, paidbravoes of the smug citizens who constitute the state, full of meat and sleep,wereuponus.Notonlyhadwehadnobreakfast,butwehadhadnowater.

And beaten men are prone to feverishness. I wonder, my reader, if you canglimpse or guess the faintest connotation of a man beaten—“beat up,” weprisonerscallit.Butno,Ishallnottellyou.Letitsufficetoknowthatthesebeaten,feverishmenlaysevenhourswithoutwater.

At nine the guards arrived.There were not many of them.There was noneedformany,becausetheyunlockedonlyonedungeonatatime.Theywereequipped with pick-handles—a handy tool for the “disciplining” of a helplessman.One dungeon at a time, and dungeon by dungeon, they messed andpulped the lifers.They were impartial.I received the same pulping as therest. And this was merely the beginning, the preliminary to the examinationeach man was to undergo alone in the presence of the paid brutes of the state.It was the forecast to each man of what each man might expect in inquisitionhall.

Ihavebeenthroughmostoftheredhellsofprisonlife,but,worstofall,farworsethanwhattheyintendtodowithmeinashortwhile,wasthe

particularhellofthedungeonsinthedaysthatfollowed.

Long Bill Hodge, the hard-bitten mountaineer, was the first maninterrogated. He came back two hours later—or, rather, they conveyed himback, and threw him on the stone of his dungeon floor. They then took awayLuigi Polazzo, a San Francisco hoodlum, the first native generation of Italianparentage,whojeeredandsneeredatthemandchallengedthemtowreaktheirworstuponhim.

ItwassometimebeforeLongBillHodgemasteredhispainsufficientlytobecoherent.

“What about this dynamite?” he demanded. “Who knows anything aboutdynamite?”

Andofcoursenobodyknew,althoughithadbeentheburdenoftheinterrogationputtohim.

LuigiPolazzocamebackinalittlelessthantwohours,andhecamebackawreck that babbled in delirium and could give no answer to the questionsshowered upon him along the echoing corridor of dungeons by the men whowere yet to get what he had got, and who desired greatly to know what thingshadbeendonetohimandwhatinterrogationshadbeenputtohim.

Twice again in the next forty-eight hours Luigi was taken out andinterrogated.After that, a gibbering imbecile, he went to live in BughouseAlley.Hehasastrongconstitution.Hisshouldersarebroad,hisnostrilswide,his chest is deep, his blood is pure; he will continue to gibber in BughouseAlleylongafterIhaveswungoffandescapedthetormentofthepenitentiariesofCalifornia.

Man after man was taken away, one at a time, and the wrecks of men werebrought back, one by one, to rave and howl in the darkness. And as I lay thereand listened to the moaning and the groaning, and all the idle chattering ofpain-addled wits, somehow, vaguely reminiscent, it seemed to me thatsomewhere, some time, I had sat in a high place, callous and proud, andlistened to a similar chorus of moaning and groaning. Afterwards, as you shalllearn, I identified this reminiscence and knew that the moaning and thegroaning was of the sweep-slaves manacled to their benches, which I heardfrom above, on the poop, a soldier passenger on a galley of old Rome.ThatwaswhenIsailedforAlexandria,acaptainofmen,onmywaytoJerusalem..

.butthatisastoryIshalltellyoulater.Inthemeanwhile....

CHAPTERIV

In the meanwhile obtained the horror of the dungeons, after the discoveryof the plot to break prison. And never, during those eternal hours of waiting,wasitabsentfrommyconsciousnessthatIshouldfollowtheseotherconvictsout,endurethehellsofinquisitiontheyendured,andbebroughtbackawreckandflungonthestonefloorofmystone-walled,iron-dooreddungeon.

They came for me. Ungraciously and ungently, with blow and curse, theyhaled me forth, and I faced Captain Jamie and Warden Atherton, themselvesarrayed with the strength of half a dozen state-bought, tax-paid brutes ofguardswholingeredintheroomtodoanybidding.Buttheywerenotneeded.

“Sitdown,”saidWardenAtherton,indicatingastoutarm-chair.

I, beaten and sore, without water for a night long and a day long, faint withhunger, weak from a beating that had been added to five days in the dungeonand eighty hours in the jacket, oppressed by the calamity of human fate,apprehensive of what was to happen to me from what I had seen happen to theothers—I, a wavering waif of a human man and an erstwhile professor ofagronomy in a quiet college town, I hesitated to accept the invitation to sitdown.

Warden Atherton was a large man and a very powerful man. His handsflashedouttoagriponmyshoulders.Iwasastrawinhisstrength.Heliftedmeclearofthefloorandcrashedmedowninthechair.

“Now,”hesaid,whileIgaspedandswallowedmypain,“tellmeallaboutit,Standing.Spititout—allofit,ifyouknowwhat’shealthyforyou.”

“Idon’tknowanythingaboutwhathashappened...”,Ibegan.

ThatwasasfarasIgot.Withagrowlandaleaphewasuponme.Againheliftedmeintheairandcrashedmedownintothechair.

“Nononsense,Standing,”hewarned.“Makeacleanbreastofit.Whereisthedynamite?”

“I don’t know anything of any dynamite,” I protested.OnceagainIwasliftedandsmashedbackintothechair.

I have endured tortures of various sorts, but when I reflect upon them inthe quietness of these my last days, I am confident that no other torture wasquite the equal of that chair torture. By my body that stout chair was batteredout of any semblance of a chair. Another chair was brought, and in time thatchair was demolished.But more chairs were brought, and the eternalquestioningaboutthedynamitewenton.

When Warden Atherton grew tired, Captain Jamie relieved him; and thentheguardMonohantookCaptainJamie’splaceinsmashingmedownintothe

chair. And always it was dynamite, dynamite, “Where is the dynamite?” andthere was no dynamite. Why, toward the last I would have given a largeportion of my immortal soul for a few pounds of dynamite to which I couldconfess.

I do not know how many chairs were broken by my body. I fainted timeswithout number, and toward the last the whole thing became nightmarish. Iwas half-carried, half-shoved and dragged back to the dark.There, when Ibecame conscious, I found a stool in my dungeon. He was a pallid-faced, littledope-fiend of a short-timer who would do anything to obtain the drug.Assoon as I recognized him I crawled to the grating and shouted out along thecorridor:

“Thereisastoolinwithme,fellows!He’sIgnatiusIrvine!Watchoutwhatyousay!”

Theoutburstofimprecationsthatwentupwouldhaveshakenthefortitudeof a braver man than Ignatius Irvine. He was pitiful in his terror, while allabout him, roaring like beasts, the pain-racked lifers told him what awfulthingstheywoulddotohimintheyearsthatweretocome.

Hadtherebeensecrets,thepresenceofastoolinthedungeonswouldhavekept the men quiet, As it was, having all sworn to tell the truth, they talkedopenly before Ignatius Irvine.The one great puzzle was the dynamite, ofwhich they were as much in the dark as was I.They appealed to me.If Iknewanythingaboutthedynamitetheybeggedmetoconfessitandsavethemall from further misery. And I could tell them only the truth, that I knew of nodynamite.

One thing the stool told me, before the guards removed him, showed howserious was this matter of the dynamite. Of course, I passed the word along,whichwasthatnotawheelhadturnedintheprisonallday.Thethousandsofconvict-workers had remained locked in their cells, and the outlook was thatnotoneofthevariousprison-factorieswouldbeoperatedagainuntilafterthediscovery of some dynamite that somebody had hidden somewhere in theprison.

And ever the examination went on.Ever, one at a time, convicts weredragged away and dragged or carried back again. They reported that WardenAtherton and Captain Jamie, exhausted by their efforts, relieved each othereverytwohours.Whileoneslept,theotherexamined.Andtheysleptintheirclothes in the very room in which strong man after strong man was beingbroken.

And hour by hour, in the dark dungeons, our madness of torment grew.Oh,trustmeasonewhoknows,hangingisaneasythingcomparedwiththe

way live men may be hurt in all the life of them and still live. I, too, sufferedequally with them from pain and thirst; but added to my suffering was the factthat I remained conscious to the sufferings of the others.I had been anincorrigible for two years, and my nerves and brain were hardened tosuffering.It is a frightful thing to see a strong man broken.About me, at theone time, were forty strong men being broken. Ever the cry for water went up,and the place became lunatic with the crying, sobbing, babbling and raving ofmenindelirium.

Don’tyousee?Ourtruth,theverytruthwetold,wasourdamnation.

Whenfortymentoldthesamethingswithsuchunanimity,WardenAthertonandCaptainJamiecouldonlyconcludethatthetestimonywasamemorizedliewhicheachofthefortyrattledoffparrot-like.

From the standpoint of the authorities, their situation was as desperate asours.As I learned afterward, the Board of Prison Directors had beensummonedbytelegraph,andtwocompaniesofstatemilitiawerebeingrushedtotheprison.

It was winter weather, and the frost is sometimes shrewd even in aCaliforniawinter.Wehadnoblanketsinthedungeons.Pleaseknowthatitisvery cold to stretch bruised human flesh on frosty stone. In the end they didgive us water. Jeering and cursing us, the guards ran in the fire-hoses andplayed the fierce streams on us, dungeon by dungeon, hour after hour, untilour bruised flesh was battered all anew by the violence with which the watersmote us, until we stood knee-deep in the water which we had raved for andforwhichnowweravedtocease.

I shall skip the rest of what happened in the dungeons. In passing I shallmerely state that no one of those forty lifers was ever the same again. LuigiPolazzoneverrecoveredhisreason.LongBillHodgeslowlylosthissanity,so that a year later, he, too, went to live in Bughouse Alley. Oh, and othersfollowed Hodge and Polazzo; and others, whose physical stamina had beenimpaired, fell victims to prison-tuberculosis. Fully 25 per cent. of the fortyhavediedinthesucceedingsixyears.

Aftermyfiveyearsinsolitary,whentheytookmeawayfromSanQuentinfor my trial, I saw Skysail Jack. I could see little, for I was blinking in thesunshine like a bat, after five years of darkness; yet I saw enough of SkysailJack to pain my heart.It was in crossing the Prison Yard that I saw him.Hishair had turned white.He was prematurely old.His chest had caved in.Hischeeks were sunken.His hands shook as with palsy.He tottered as hewalked. And his eyes blurred with tears as he recognized me, for I, too, was asadwreckofwhathadoncebeenaman.Iweighedeighty-sevenpounds.Myhair,streakedwithgray,wasafive-years’growth,asweremybeardand

moustache. And I, too, tottered as I walked, so that the guards helped to leadme across that sun-blinding patch of yard. And Skysail Jack and I peered andkneweachotherunderthewreckage.

Mensuchasheareprivileged,eveninaprison,sothathedaredaninfractionoftherulesbyspeakingtomeinacrackedandquaveringvoice.

“You’reagoodone,Standing,”hecackled.“Youneversquealed.”

“ButIneverknew,Jack,”Iwhisperedback—Iwascompelledtowhisper,for five years of disuse had well-nigh lost me my voice. “I don’t think thereeverwasanydynamite.”

“That’sright,”hecackled,noddinghisheadchildishly.“Stickwithit.

Don’teverlet’mknow.You’reagoodone.Itakemyhatofftoyou,Standing.Youneversquealed.”

And the guards led me on, and that was the last I saw of Skysail Jack. Itwasplainthatevenhehadbecomeabelieverinthedynamitemyth.

***

Twice they had me before the full Board of Directors. I was alternatelybullied and cajoled.Their attitude resolved itself into two propositions.If Ideliveredupthedynamite,theywouldgivemeanominalpunishmentofthirtydays in the dungeon and then make me a trusty in the prison library.If Ipersisted in my stubbornness and did not yield up the dynamite, then theywould put me in solitary for the rest of my sentence. In my case, being a lifeprisoner, this was tantamount to condemning me to solitary confinement forlife.

Oh, no; California is civilized.There is no such law on the statute books.It is a cruel and unusual punishment, and no modern state would be guilty ofsuch a law. Nevertheless, in the history of California I am the third man whohas been condemned for life to solitary confinement. The other two were JakeOppenheimer and Ed Morrell.I shall tell you about them soon, for I rottedwiththemforyearsinthecellsofsilence.

Oh, another thing.They are going to take me out and hang me in a littlewhile—no, not for killing Professor Haskell. I got life-imprisonment for that.They are going to take me out and hang me because I was found guilty ofassault and battery.And this is not prison discipline.It is law, and as law itwillbefoundinthecriminalstatutes.

I believe I made a man’s nose bleed. I never saw it bleed, but that was theevidence.Thurston, his name was.He was a guard at San Quentin.Heweighed one hundred and seventy pounds and was in good health. I weighedunderninetypounds,wasblindasabatfromthelongdarkness,andhadbeen

so long pent in narrow walls that I was made dizzy by large open spaces.Really,mimewasawell-definedcaseofincipientagoraphobia,asIquicklylearnedthatdayIescapedfromsolitaryandpunchedtheguardThurstononthenose.

I struck him on the nose and made it bleed when he got in my way andtried to catch hold of me.And so they are going to hang me.It is the writtenlaw of the State of California that a lifetimer like me is guilty of a capitalcrimewhenhestrikesaprisonguardlikeThurston.Surely,hecouldnothavebeen inconvenienced more than half an hour by that bleeding nose; and yettheyaregoingtohangmeforit.

And, see!This law, in my case, is ex post facto.It was not a law at thetime I killed Professor Haskell.It was not passed until after I received mylife-sentence. And this is the very point: my life-sentence gave me my statusunder this law which had not yet been written on the books. And it is becauseof my status of lifetimer that I am to be hanged for battery committed on theguardThurston.Itisclearlyexpostfacto,and,therefore,unconstitutional.

ButwhatbearinghastheConstitutiononconstitutionallawyerswhentheywant to put the notorious Professor Darrell Standing out of the way? Nor do Ieven establish the precedent with my execution.A year ago, as everybody who reads the newspapers knows, they hanged Jake Oppenheimer, right herein Folsom, for a precisely similar offence . . . only, in his case of battery, hewas not guilty of making a guard’s nose bleed.He cut a convictunintentionallywithabread-knife.

It is strange—life and men’s ways and laws and tangled paths.I amwritingtheselinesintheverycellinMurderers’ RowthatJakeOppenheimeroccupied ere they took him out and did to him what they are going to do tome.

I warned you I had many things to write about.I shall now return to mynarrative.The Board of Prison Directors gave me my choice: a prisontrustyship and surcease from the jute-looms if I gave up the non-existentdynamite;lifeimprisonmentinsolitaryifIrefusedtogiveupthenon-existentdynamite.

They gave me twenty-four hours in the jacket to think it over. Then I wasbrought before the Board a second time.What could I do?I could not leadthem to the dynamite that was not.I told them so, and they told me I was aliar. They told me I was a hard case, a dangerous man, a moral degenerate, thecriminalofthecentury.Theytoldmemanyotherthings,andthentheycarriedme away to the solitary cells.I was put into Number One cell.In NumberFive lay Ed Morrell.In Number Twelve lay Jake Oppenheimer.And he hadbeentherefortenyears.EdMorrellhadbeeninhiscellonlyoneyear.He

wasservingafifty-years’ sentence.JakeOppenheimerwasalifer.Andsowas I a lifer. Wherefore the outlook was that the three of us would remainthere for a long time. And yet, six years only are past, and not one of us is insolitary.JakeOppenheimerwasswungoff.EdMorrellwasmadeheadtrustyof San Quentin and then pardoned out only the other day. And here I am inFolsomwaitingthedaydulysetbyJudgeMorgan,whichwillbemylastday.

The fools!As if they could throttle my immortality with their clumsydevice of rope and scaffold! I shall walk, and walk again, oh, countless times,this fair earth. And I shall walk in the flesh, be prince and peasant, savant andfool,sitinthehighplaceandgroanunderthewheel.

CHAPTERV

It was very lonely, at first, in solitary, and the hours were long. Time wasmarked by the regular changing of the guards, and by the alternation of dayand night. Day was only a little light, but it was better than the all-dark of thenight. In solitary the day was an ooze, a slimy seepage of light from the brightouterworld.

Never was the light strong enough to read by. Besides, there was nothingto read.One could only lie and think and think.And I was a lifer, and itseemedcertain,ifIdidnotdoamiracle,makethirty-fivepoundsofdynamiteoutofnothing,thatalltheyearsofmylifewouldbespentinthesilentdark.

My bed was a thin and rotten tick of straw spread on the cell floor. Onethinandfilthyblanketconstitutedthecovering.Therewasnochair,notable

—nothing but the tick of straw and the thin, aged blanket. I was ever a shortsleeper and ever a busy-brained man. In solitary one grows sick of oneself inhis thoughts, and the only way to escape oneself is to sleep. For years I hadaveragedfivehours’sleepanight.Inowcultivatedsleep.Imadeascienceofit. I became able to sleep ten hours, then twelve hours, and, at last, as high asfourteen and fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. But beyond that I could notgo, and, perforce, was compelled to lie awake and think and think. And thatway,foranactive-brainedman,laymadness.

I sought devices to enable me mechanically to abide my waking hours.Isquared and cubed long series of numbers, and by concentration and willcarried on most astonishing geometric progressions.I even dallied with thesquaring of the circle . . . until I found myself beginning to believe that thatpossibility could be accomplished. Whereupon, realizing that there, too, laymadness,Iforwentthesquaringofthecircle,althoughIassureyouitrequired

aconsiderablesacrificeonmypart,forthementalexerciseinvolvedwasasplendidtime-killer.

By sheer visualization under my eyelids I constructed chess-boards andplayed both sides of long games through to checkmate.But when I hadbecome expert at this visualized game of memory the exercise palled on me.Exerciseitwas,fortherecouldbenorealcontestwhenthesameplayerplayedboth sides.I tried, and tried vainly, to split my personality into twopersonalities and to pit one against the other.But ever I remained the oneplayer, with no planned ruse or strategy on one side that the other side did notimmediatelyapprehend.

And time was very heavy and very long. I played games with flies, withordinary house-flies that oozed into solitary as did the dim gray light; andlearned that they possessed a sense of play. For instance, lying on the cellfloor,Iestablishedanarbitraryandimaginarylinealongthewallsomethreefeet above the floor. When they rested on the wall above this line they wereleft in peace. The instant they lighted on the wall below the line I tried tocatch them.I was careful never to hurt them, and, in time, they knew asprecisely as did I where ran the imaginary line. When they desired to play,theylightedbelowtheline,andoftenforanhouratatimeasingleflywouldengage in the sport.When it grew tired, it would come to rest on the safeterritoryabove.