Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/341

 CHAPTER XXXII

A WHIRLWIND IN THE DUST

AVEN'T you heard what happened, Starosta?" asked the convict servant who was working in the political wing, as he entered my cell one morning.

"Last night three new prisoners arrived and were put in the cell with the Ivans, who started, as is their wont, to beat and rob them. They thrashed two of them, but the third one gave them all such a licking that scarcely anyone is able to get up this morning. He went through the room like a whirlwind."

"And what about him?" I asked, remembering my first prison talk with Mironoff.

"He is sitting there on his bench whistling and telling such funny stories that the Ivans are roaring with laughter over him."

After dinner I went along to see the new arrival, so graphically described by my prisoner servant. I found the stranger seated in the chair and regaling his hearers in a quiet, melodious voice with such yarns that they were beside themselves with laughter. He was of enormous height, broad-shouldered, slightly stooping and had a chest as big and round as a church dome. He was just in the act of recounting the amusing story of how he had happened to land in prison.

"Back home in Poland I heard that railroad workers were well paid in Siberia and consequently started out 329