Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/233

Rh different cells, they went to the wash-room, whispered a moment among themselves and suddenly bolted through the kitchen into the yard, where they scrambled up over the fence and ran for it. Several sentries fired at them and all three went down. When the soldiers and keepers reached them, two were already dead and the third had a wounded foot. For his attempt to escape this one was tried two months later and received six years of hard labour. Such events ruffled the calm of the prison, sometimes in a mirthful and sometimes in a very sad manner.

Gradually I began to take a more active part in the prison life. Finding among my accidental housemates many young men who were quite illiterate, I proposed to Nowakowski that we start some instruction work and soon had formed with him classes in reading, writing and accounts. In addition we gave daily lectures in history, literature and physical science, to which the keepers, the soldiers and finally even the Commandant and his assistants, most of them but very poorly educated, came and listened attentively. The prisoners were attracted to us, respected us and were really fond of us. We enjoyed the respect of the authorities also and profited from this, in that, whenever punishment was meted out to the whole prison after someone had escaped, exception was made in the case of Nowakowski and myself, so that our habits of life were in no way restricted or changed.

It was interesting and curious to observe the psychology of individuals thus kept continuously within four walls and obliged to live together. I often saw serious and well-educated men quarrelling about some such trivial matter as that one of them had taken a bigger piece of bread or meat than was his rightful portion, and, because of this, turning enemies and refusing to shake hands with each other. It was a strange phenomenon,