Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/203

 CHAPTER XVIII

GRANTED A STAY

FTER my transfer six of us lived in the little cell designed for only two inmates. Though space was very limited and the quarters were dirty and stuffy, we had hope to dwell with us and cheer us. At once the will to live returned and with it the resolve to have better conditions which set us about securing them.

First of all, we put our abode in order. Asking for water, soap, rags and paper, we scrubbed the floor, which had probably not been so treated since it was laid; we cleaned the walls and the ceiling; we caught all the night raiders, showing them no mercy, and then began a warfare on the rats.

Our first move was to stuff with rags all the holes through which these reddish-grey animals came up from under the floor. Of course, the cloths were not proof against the sharp teeth of the marauding rodents, but we developed a method of counter-attack that proved effective. While we were cleaning our cell, we discovered some bits of glass on top of the stove, which we pounded fairly fine and combined with the rags to make stoppers for the holes, alternating a thickness of cloth with a layer of the powdered glass in such a way that the pincers of our enemies could no longer cut our barbed-wire entanglements.

But this was purely a mechanical device and did not entirely satisfy my ideas of warfare as a trained chemist, 191