Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/56

 missed fire. I looked at the gun, cleaned the touch-hole, poured some fresh powder into it, struck the flint and put the gun to my breast again. And would you believe it? The powder flashed but the gun did not go off again. I wondered what was the meaning of it. I took my boot and put it on, fixed on the bayonet and walked to and fro, saying nothing. It was then I made up my mind to do what I did: I did not care where I went if I could get away from there. Half an hour later, the officer rode up; he was making the chief round of inspection. He went straight for me: “Is that the way to stand on sentry duty?” I took my gun in my hand and stuck the bayonet into him up to the hilt. I’ve come four thousand miles and I am here with a life sentence"

He was not lying. And for what other crime could he have been given a life sentence? Ordinary crimes are punished far more leniently. But Sirotkin was the only good-looking one of these “lifers.” As for the others in the same case, of whom there were about fifteen among us, it was strange to look at them there were only two or three tolerable faces among them; the others were all such hideous creatures, filthy looking, with long ears. Some of them were grey-headed men. If possible, I will describe all this group more exactly later on. Sirotkin was often friendly with Gazin, the convict whom I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, describing how he staggered into the kitchen drunk and how he upset my preconceived ideas of prison life.

This Gazin was a horrible creature. He made a terrible and painful impression on every one. It always seemed to me that there could not be a more ferocious monster than he was. I have seen at Tobolsk, Kamenev, a robber famous for his crimes; later on I saw Sokolov, a runaway soldier who was being tried for terrible murders he had committed. But neither of them made such a repulsive impression on me as Gazin. I sometimes felt as though I were looking at a huge gigantic spider of the size of a man. He was a Tatar, terribly strong, stronger than anyone in the prison, of more than average height, of Herculean proportions, with a hideous, disproportionately huge head; he walked with a slouch and looked sullenly from under his brows. There were strange rumours about him in the prison; it was known that he had been a soldier, but the convicts said among themselves, I do not know with what truth, that he was an escaped convict from Nertchinsk, that he had been sent more