Something let fall discovered to the warden that Jim, while not in,
was familiar with the whole history of the insurrection. The offer of
freedom had no further effect upon him than a careless refusal to
comply with the terms set forth. But when force was suggested, he set
his lips in that old way that belonged to his mother, and said
nothing. Three days they gave him to "knock under." But the only
change noticeable during that time was a more decided sullenness, a
look in the cold, gray eyes that meant death rather than yielding.
Once the soft-voiced young man who had put out his hand in his defence
the day of his arrival at the stockade, and had afterward called him
"friend," the only time he had ever heard the word addressed to
himself, once he came over where Jim sat cleaning the warden's boots,
and motioned him.
Jim shook his head, and went on blacking the big boots. But when the
young convict drew nearer, and tried to take his hand, he drew back,
and struck at him viciously with the blacking brush.
"Git out, will you! And don't come a-fooling with this brush, lest you
want your d--n head broke."
He had seen a guard spying upon them at a half open door in the rear
of the young convict. At Jim's outburst of temper the guard entered.
"Come away from him, Solly," he said, "the surly beast is as like as
not to knock your brains out."
The convict turned to obey, but the glance he got of Jim's face
carried a full explanation. The temper was affected to keep down
suspicion. After that came the punishment at the pump, the merciless
beating, and then, all things proving unavailing, he was put in the
dungeon to have the "truth starved out of him."
After three days he was brought out, faint, pale, ready to die at
every step, but with that same immovable _something_ shining in his
eyes, and his lips still set in the old way that he had of his mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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