strong man was being broken.

And hour by hour, in the dark dungeons, our madness of torment grew. Oh,
trust me as one who knows, hanging is an easy thing compared with the way
live men may be hurt in all the life of them and still live. I, too,
suffered equally with them from pain and thirst; but added to my
suffering was the fact that I remained conscious to the sufferings of the
others. I had been an incorrigible for two years, and my nerves and
brain were hardened to suffering. It is a frightful thing to see a
strong man broken. About me, at the one time, were forty strong men
being broken. Ever the cry for water went up, and the place became
lunatic with the crying, sobbing, babbling and raving of men in delirium.

Don't you see? Our truth, the very truth we told, was our damnation.
When forty men told the same things with such unanimity, Warden Atherton
and Captain Jamie could only conclude that the testimony was a memorized
lie which each of the forty rattled off parrot-like.

From the standpoint of the authorities, their situation was as desperate
as ours. As I learned afterward, the Board of Prison Directors had been
summoned by telegraph, and two companies of state militia were being
rushed to the prison.

It was winter weather, and the frost is sometimes shrewd even in a
California winter. We had no blankets in the dungeons. Please know that
it is very cold to stretch bruised human flesh on frosty stone. In the
end they did give us water. Jeering and cursing us, the guards ran in
the fire-hoses and played the fierce streams on us, dungeon by dungeon,
hour after hour, until our bruised flesh was battered all anew by the
violence with which the water smote us, until we stood knee-deep in the