Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/348

 CHAPTER XXXIII

OUT OF THE STONE SACK

N the course of my prison peregrinations I was finally taken back to Harbin, where I found many old acquaintances and everything unchanged. My prison companions had cared for my vegetables and flowers, the tomatoes and brilliant asters giving me a special welcome back to my first criminal prison.

Only the aquarium had been neglected. The water had evaporated and left a deposit of thick mud at the bottom. The tortoises had fled, but no one knew when or where. When cleaning out the concrete bowl, I found the mud so stiff for my wooden shovel that I brought a bucket of water or two to help me in loosening the mass at the bottom. After a time, when the mud was well moistened and I began again to dig with my shovel, I was astonished and could hardly believe my eyes at seeing in the deeper and more moist layers of the earth little crustaceans and carp flap out of the soil and begin swimming round in the muddy water. They were some of the very ones which I had put into the aquarium and for whose rescue I returned just in time, since a few days more would have dried up their remaining moisture and taken life away.

I had only one week left to remain in prison! A strange unrest took possession of me, growing with each passing day. Was it joy? Was it impatience to be free? 336