But Not Without Hope

I could not deny that I had committed a crime, but in body and soul I knew the sentence was too severe. For a crime that hurt nobody, a theft with all the stolen goods returned, I got a harsh prison sentence. Angry and despondent, I broke loose from my captors and ran like a rabbit. I was quickly apprehended and frog marched back to court. Two rawboned policemen stood close beside me, each gripping an elbow. They would not allow me to sit. The judge scowled at me for a full two minutes without speaking a word. Then shaking his head, he pounded his gavel hard and loud. With obvious satisfaction, he gave me seven years’hard labor for theft. Pounding the gavel hard a second time (I thought it would surely break ) he added another year for my trying to escape custody. I would serve the eight years not in France but at Devil’s Island near the equator. I knew the climate to be unspeakably hot and the prison cruel. Reports of scandalous abuse were often in the news. That odious prison colony was built by slaves in 1852. It became in the course of a century one of the worst in the entire world. Many thousands were sent there to suffer and die.