Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/251

Rh and the prison in Middle Kará had an experience similar to that of the Ust Kará party, except that they were not beaten by their guards. Before dark the hundred or more state criminals who had occupied the kámeras of the political prison were distributed in small parties among the common-criminal prisons of Ust Kará, the Lower Diggings, Middle Kará, and Upper Kará; the long-term [bez sróchni] convicts were in both handcuffs and leg-fetters, and all were living under "dungeon conditions." In this manner Governor Ilyashévich and Mr. Gálkine Wrásskoy put down the "insurrection" that a hundred or more sleeping prisoners presumably would have raised when they awoke, taught the "insurgents" a valuable and much-needed "lesson," and showed the Minister of the Interior how vigorously and successfully is subordinates could deal with a sudden and threatening emergency — and with sleeping men! The political prison had been "reduced to order," but it was the order" that once "reigned in Warsaw."

For two months the political convicts lived under "dungeon conditions" in the cells of the common-criminal prisons, seeing little of one another and knowing nothing of what was happening in the outside world. Bad air, bad and insufficient food, and the complete lack of exercise soon began injuriously to affect their health; scurvy broke out among them, and in less than a month several, including Tíkhonof and Zhukófski, were at the point of death, and many more were so weak that they could not rise to their feet when ordered to stand up for verification. During all of this time the prison authorities had in their possession money belonging to these wretched convicts; but they would not allow the latter to use it, nor to direct its expenditure for the underclothing, bedding, and nourishing food of which the sick especially were in such urgent need. It was not until scurvy threatened to become epidemic that Major Khaltúrin, a cruel gendarme officer from