inefficacious. Forsooth, as if spirit
could be thrust through with steel or throttled by a rope!

CHAPTER XIX

Next to Oppenheimer and Morrell, who rotted with me through the years of
darkness, I was considered the most dangerous prisoner in San Quentin. On
the other hand I was considered the toughest--tougher even than
Oppenheimer and Morrell. Of course by toughness I mean enduringness.
Terrible as were the attempts to break them in body and in spirit, more
terrible were the attempts to break me. And I endured. Dynamite or
curtains had been Warden Atherton's ultimatum. And in the end it was
neither. I could not produce the dynamite, and Warden Atherton could not
induce the curtains.

It was not because my body was enduring, but because my spirit was
enduring. And it was because, in earlier existences, my spirit had been
wrought to steel-hardness by steel-hard experiences. There was one
experience that for long was a sort of nightmare to me. It had neither
beginning nor end. Always I found myself on a rocky, surge-battered
islet so low that in storms the salt spray swept over its highest point.
It rained much. I lived in a lair and suffered greatly, for I was
without fire and lived on uncooked meat.

Always I suffered. It was the middle of some experience to which I could
get no clue. And since, when I went into the little death I had no power
of directing my journeys, I often found myself reliving this particularly
detestable experience. My only happy moments were when the sun shone, at
which times I basked on the rocks and thawed out the almost perpetual
chill I suffered.

My one diversion was an oar and a jackknife. Upon this oar I spent much
time, carving minute letters and cutting a notch for each week that
passed. There were many notches. I sharpened the knife on a flat piece
of rock, and no barber was ever more careful of his favourite razor than
was I of that knife. Nor did ever a miser prize his treasure as did I
prize the knife. It was as precious as my life. In truth, it was my
life.

By many repetitions, I managed to bring back out of the jacket the legend
that was carved on the oar. At first I could bring but little. Later,
it grew easier, a matter of piecing portions together. And at last I had
the thing complete. Here it is:

This is to acquaint the person into whose hands this Oar may fall, that
Daniel Foss, a native of Elkton, in Maryland, one of the United State