It
would all depend. If fellow-prisoners hated each other, their enforced
proximity might prove unpleasant.
"We are hungry," he heard one say. "Bring us food."
The gaoler laughed.
"I will give you something to drink first."
"That's right," three voices shouted. "Vodka, vodka!"
Then the door clanged shut again, and he heard the murmur of voices in
Russian, but could not make out what was said. One of the new
prisoners, groping round, appeared to have struck the stone bench, as
he himself had done. The man in the next cell swore coarsely, and
Lermontoff, judging from such snatches of their conversation as he
could hear that they were persons of a low order, felt no desire to
make their more intimate acquaintance, and so did not shout to them,
as he had intended to do. And now he missed something that had become
familiar; thought it was a cigarette he desired, for the one he had
lit had been smoked to his very lips, then he recognized it was the
murmur of the stream that had ceased.
"Ah, they can shut it off," he said. "That's interesting. I must
investigate, and learn whether or no there is communication between
the cells. Not very likely, though."
He crawled on hands and knees until he came to the bed of the stream,
which was now damp, but empty. Kneeling down in its course, he worked
his way toward the lower cell, and, as he expected, came to stout iron
bars. Crouching thus he sacrificed a second match, and estimated that
the distance between the two cells was as much as ten feet of solid
rock, and saw also that behind the perpendicular iron bars were
another horizontal set, then another perpendicular, then a fourth
horizontal.
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