Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/268

256 the stupefying cold of the Siberian winters, with the katorga or penal colony of enforced hard labour, with Zerentoui, Akatoui and Onor.

Cell No. 1 had this night gone late to rest, for long after midnight their card-playing continued in spite of the threatening calls of the guards. One among them, Basil Drujenin, did not sleep. He lay on his back with his hands under his head and stared out of his wide-open eyes at the circle of yellow light which the lamp threw on the dirty ceiling. He was pondering stubbornly over something, and at times his eyes brightened as some wave of hope swept through his dreams. Finally, as an idea struck him, he suddenly sat up and loosed the noisy spirits that seemed always to be hiding in his irons. From the benches around him came the mutterings of his dreaming mates, indistinct words, generally meaningless but sometimes charged with terrible coherency.

Basil sat for a long time listening and waiting. Finally, before dawn, there travelled along the bricks of the wall an indistinct sound, that told it had come through winding and circuitous ways. It was repeated a second time and Drujenin smiled. He knew and recognized the signal of his friend, Elia Lapin, who was living out a punishment in irons in a subterranean cell. Thrice Basil struck the wall with his own irons to apprise his friend that he was listening. Then he heard more distinctly the combination of raps so well known to every prisoner—one loud stroke, five low ones and again two heavy blows, which was the regular code form of Saryn da na kiechku.

Drujenin smiled joyfully and, stretching himself across his bed, answered with one sharp knock on the wall. Again silence ruled, for the prisoner, after the last clanking of his irons as he turned on his side, seemed to have fallen asleep.