With my wrists in bonds of iron, and my soul fettered by one idea--
horrible, implacable--the days passed: I kept no count of them.
Whilst the glimmer of daylight shone through the chink above I spent the
time sitting engrossed in my own sad thoughts, or pacing the narrow cell
for exercise. When it had faded I cast myself, restless and nervous,
upon the heap of evil-smelling straw that served as bed, waiting
patiently for the reappearance of the streak of grey light.
Those hours of awful silence and suspense I shall never forget.
Do what I might a terrible thought, a deep-rooted conviction, was ever
with me, like a spectre haunting me face to face, frustrating every
endeavour to close my eyes--it was that by Vera's instrumentality I had
been arrested and incarcerated in that foul dungeon.
The jailer, when he brought my daily ration of food, seldom spoke; but
on one occasion I asked him:
"What is my sentence?"
"You know better than I," he growled. "Indeed, I do not. Tell me; is
it death?"
"No; the death sentence has been abolished by order of the Czar.
Criminals are tortured to death instead of being killed instantaneously
by hanging."
"And is this the commencement of my torture?" I asked, glancing round
the glistening walls, that looked black and unwholesome in the
flickering lamplight.
"You may call it so, if you like," he replied.
"Many prisoners would no doubt prefer the death sentence being passed
upon them--but that the law now forbids."
"Shall I never leave this horrible place?" I asked.
"Shall I never again see the blessed light of day?"
"Yes," he muttered, ominously, "you will leave here--some day--never to
return."
I said no more. I knew he meant that when I left the prison I should be
dead.
_Torture till death_! This, then, was my sentence! The words were
continually passing through my brain, attacking me whilst waking, and
intruding themselves upon my spasmodic attempts to sleep; appearing in
my dreams in all their hideousness.
Even when I awakened to realise the terrible reality that surrounded me,
those four bare walls, coarse clothes, straw pallet, and the monotonous
tramp of the sentry in the corridor outside my door, the words rang a
continuous, demoniacal chorus in my ears. _Torture till death_!
In my solitary confinement I naturally began to seek some means by which
to occupy attention and divert my mind from the unjust and horrible
sentence.
One matter interested me in a dreamy, indifferent way. It was the
inscriptions that had been traced upon the damp walls of my gloomy cell,
presumably by former occupants.
Having been in darkness so long, I had developed an acute sensitiveness
in the tips of my fingers, almost in the same manner as the blind; and
for recreation I took to groping about, feeling the indentations upon
the stone, and trying to sketch their appearance mentally.
Hours--nay, days--I spent in this grim but interesting occupation,
studying carefully the initials, dates, and other inscriptions, and
after I had formed a correct picture in my imagination, I would sit
down, wondering by whose hand those letters had been graven; what was
the prisoner's crime; and how long he had lived in that terrible tomb.
The persons who had been confined there before me must have been legion,
for the walls seemed literally covered with words and symbols, some well
defined, others only scratched roughly and almost obliterated by the
thick slime which covered them. So interested was I in their study
that, after a short time, I had gained a pretty accurate knowledge of
the appearance and position of most of them. Some had written their
names in full, with the date; one had drawn a gallows, and many had
inscribed lines of words like poetry, but as they were in Russian I was
unable to read them.
I confess, though I gave up the greater portion of every day to the
investigation of the self-executed epitaphs of those who had gone
before, I made but little progress in their meaning.
Still, they served to occupy my time, and for that alone I was thankful.
I had gone methodically to work in my strange researches, commencing at
the door, and taking them one by one from the floor upwards, as far as I
could reach. The advancement I made was not great; in fact, I was
purposely slow, and took a considerable time over the examination of
each one, because I wanted my task to last as long as possible.
Of those upon the sides of the cell I had formed a fairly distinct
mental picture, and one day while engaged upon the wall opposite the
door groping along as usual, my hand passed over a circular indentation
cut deeply in the stone, which I judged to be about six inches in
circumference. It was on a level with my head, and by the first touch I
distinguished it was entirely different from the others, both in form,
size, and general character.
Interested in this discovery, I proceeded to make a minute investigation
with the tips of the fingers of both hands.
There were two circles, the one inside the other, about an inch apart,
and I felt some writing in the intervening space. Round the circle I
ran my fingers; the inscription was not profuse, only nine ill-formed
letters.
"The name of some prisoner, perhaps," I said to myself, as I carefully
passed my finger over each letter, and tried to picture it upon my mind.
The first was of so strange a form that I could make nothing out of it,
so passed on to the next. This seemed like a small thin line, crooked
half-way down; the next was straight, like a figure one, and the next
very similar, and so on, until I came to the one I had examined first.
Disappointed because I could not decipher a single character of what
seemed hieroglyphics, I passed my hand over the whole in an endeavour to
gain a general impression of it, when I found the centre of the circle
was occupied by some large solid device.
I felt again. It bore some resemblance to the letter T inverted, and
then momentarily, there flashed across my mind the thought that I had
somewhere seen an emblem of similar appearance.
Eagerly I ran my hands over it, carefully fingering the centre, and
trying to form a clearer idea of what it was like, when I suddenly
recollected where I had met its exact counterpart.
"Yes, there is no mistake," I said in an awed whisper, once more
fingering it in breathless excitement.
"The characters must be the same; the centre is the same; it differs in
no particular. It is the Seal!"