AWAITING THE HEMLOCK
I BEGAN to look around me. My cell was not very large, four steps in length and three wide. It had a massive, vaulted ceiling, so low that I could almost reach it with my hand; but, when I started to do this, the soldier cried in a voice that seemed made for intimidation:
"That is not allowed. I shall shoot!"
I left the ceiling in peace and turned to the window, which was not more than a foot square, was heavily barred and so nearly covered by boards on the outside that I could only see a narrow strip of black night sky and some stars. They shone calmly and indifferently, quite as they had when, in my little-appreciated freedom, I watched them as I hunted in the gorges of the Sikhota Alin, as I cruised the softly undulating waters of the Japan Sea or as I wandered the thronged and laughter- loving boulevards of the Paris I had known so well and that now seemed as far from me as the Palace of the Tsar must have seemed to the life-prisoners in the cells of Sakhalin. Once more the calm and majestic indifference of Nature impressed me.
"That is not allowed. I shall shoot," came again the voice of the soldier and drove my thoughts from me.
"What is not allowed? To think?"
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