Twice again in the next forty-eight hours Luigi was taken out and
interrogated. After that, a gibbering imbecile, he went to live in
Bughouse Alley. He has a strong constitution. His shoulders are broad,
his nostrils wide, his chest is deep, his blood is pure; he will continue
to gibber in Bughouse Alley long after I have swung off and escaped the
torment of the penitentiaries of California.

Man after man was taken away, one at a time, and the wrecks of men were
brought back, one by one, to rave and howl in the darkness. And as I lay
there and listened to the moaning and the groaning, and all the idle
chattering of pain-addled wits, somehow, vaguely reminiscent, it seemed
to me that somewhere, some time, I had sat in a high place, callous and
proud, and listened to a similar chorus of moaning and groaning.
Afterwards, as you shall learn, I identified this reminiscence and knew
that the moaning and the groaning was of the sweep-slaves manacled to
their benches, which I heard from above, on the poop, a soldier passenger
on a galley of old Rome. That was when I sailed for Alexandria, a
captain of men, on my way to Jerusalem . . . but that is a story I shall
tell you later. In the meanwhile . . . .




CHAPTER IV


In the meanwhile obtained the horror of the dungeons, after the discovery
of the plot to break prison. And never, during those eternal hours of
waiting, was it absent from my consciousness that I should follow these
other convicts out, endure the hells of inquisition they endured, and be