"
"Where in the name of heaven are we?"
"Didn't you recognize the rock from the deck of a steamer?"
"I never saw the deck of a steamer."
"Then how did you come here?"
"I was writing a letter in my room when someone threw a sack over my
head, and tied me up in a bundle, so that it was a close shave I
wasn't smothered. I was taken in what I suppose was a cab and flung
into what I afterwards learned was the hold of a steamer. When the
ship stopped, I was carried like a sack of meal on someone's shoulder,
and unhampered before a gaunt specter in uniform, in a room so
dazzling with electric light that I could hardly see. That was a few
minutes ago, Now I am here, and starving. Where is this prison?"
"Like the Mikado, as Kate would say, the authorities are bent on
making the punishment fit the crime. You are in the rock of the
Baltic, which you fired at with that gun of yours. I told you those
suave officials at St. Petersburg were playing with you."
"But why have they put you here, Jack?"
"Oh, I was like the good dog Tray, who associated with questionable
company, I suppose, and thus got into trouble."
"I'm sorry."
"You ought to be glad. I'm going to get out of this place, and I don't
believe you could break gaol, unassisted, in twenty years. Here is
where science confronts brutality. I say, Drummond, bring your table
over to the corner, and mount it, then we can talk without shouting.
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