The Daily Alaska empire., 1931-04-22
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| driven in a eam-stage, dilapi- ! dated, rickety and filthy; and of the journey remember little-un- til finally, the guard conducted me into the prison.
 And now, registered, searched bathed, clothed and shorn, I was 1 given the book of the rules, which were many.
 The rules consisted mainly oi counsels of perfection, authorizations to the meekest obedience, and pro- hibiting the smuggling of tobacco drugs, sugar and other contraband into the prison, and to taking the utmost care of all state property
 The next thing remember was being taken by guard down a long, dark, though whitewashed corridor, and being shown into 3 kind of reception-room for in coming convicts.
 This room, or huge cell, was, as afterwards learned, known, for some inexplicable reason, as The Fort. It was a place that l was to see again under more dramatic circumstances.
 Here was giac- to sit down upon a bunch, for in addition to the pain in my head I felt extremely i'll, an illness mental and spiritual in origin, that had come upon me as I traversed that dark corridor, smelt the authentic dreadful prison smell and heard the dreadful prison sounds.
 These latter, I afterwards discov- cred, proceeded from the cells of men who had gone mad in prison.
 These men were not yet genuine lunatics and candidates for the criminal asylum, but consisted for the most part of two classes-those who, on the other hand, werecrea- lures of weaker fibre who had broken down under the inevitable cruelty of the system; and, on the other hand, incorrigible breakers of the law who had gone mad through punishments they had brought upon themselves.
 As I sat in that ill-lit, cold and dirty room, I wondered how long it would be before joined them in Nut House Alley, as that corridor of madmen's cells was called.
 Later more convicts were brought to this room, men, boys, negroes and Chinese. With them came a guard who seated himself and gazed at nothing.
 We sat about, suppressing yawns l fidgeting, half-dead of ennui, anx- iety. misery and boredom. For hours we sat. For nightless days and weeks and months and years we seemed to sit in a crowded silence broken only by the buzzing of a fly, until I broke down and screamed my soul out, until ir panic-terror, staring around me ano at the guard, I found that my screams were silent ..
 And here I lapsed back into the state of semi-coma in which I hac been since my head was injured and I remember very little more until, one day, I realized that il was I, John Dacre Wave Wander. leur St. Clair, who was sitting in z prison cell reading a Bible, anc had just read the words:
 Vengeance is Mine, I will re pay said the Lord"
 I rose and paced my cell, eigh feet by four by seven.
 Vengeansce. I was vengeance.
 Vengeance is Mine" saith tn Lord" Very well, then, was tn Lords Vengeance. Gods own. De dicated to vengeance.
 Vengeance is Mine saith tn Lord. I will repay"
 
 was his instrument of ven geance, through whom He woul' repay. And, who, in all this worlc a filter instrument?
 The Lord and I would work to gether, I helping Him, He helpin me.
 But Heaven helps those wh help themselves, and I must figh toothe and nail, agains merit and acceptance of my fate, lest begin the descent of the steep an slippery path that leads men dow to the terrible Nut-House Alley.
 From that hour, my periods ( complete sanity grew longer an more frequent, and my memorit of that time are more numerou and clearer.
 Men have written whole volun es telling of their lives in prisol I could with difficulty fill char ter. Incidents and details of m escape, like those of my enti into prison remember plain enough. Between stretches a de: ert of time, featurelss and mor ctounous as a desert alwoys is. A1