मेरा आजीवन कारावास / माझी जन्मठेप (स्वातंत्र्यवीर सावरकर - काले पानी का ऐतिहासिक संस्मरण)

For, as soon as war began in Europe, all the people in the Andamans, as in India,
felt an excitement and a thrill passing through them. The excitement in the Andamans
was not due to any interest in politics, or any anxiety for the future of their country,
as it was due to expectation that it would mean their freedom from the prison. It was
selfish desire that was its cause. Hence the future of the war had become a matter of
personal rest to them. Even the most ignorant among them knew stories of old
Emperors and Rajas when their King-doms were overthrown, and the prisoners had won
their freedom. And these stories from the legendary or the historical past had become
today the gossip of the entire colony. And from these instances in the past, they drew
conclusions to suit their own wishes in the present, A certain king was killed and his
kingdom was won by another. And from this instance they inferred that ii the Emperor of
Germany was made captive, the war would come to an end; and if England was defeated,
all the prisoners would be at once set free. On the floating wave of self-delusion, the
prisoners sailed their ship of hope from day-to-day.
When the warders passed their cells at night on their usual rounds, lantern in
hand, the prisoners would anxiously ask for news of war. And the self-sufficient ignorant
warder would tell them anything that came to his lips as its innermost news. Drawing
upon the talks in the town, the warder would paint before their eyes a scene of the British
Monarch standing on the top of a hill and watching his own army. He wears the crown on
his head, and a sword dangles at his side. What if the German Emperor suddenly shot him
with an arrow? But he would not do so. For, was he not the son-in-law of the English
King? His wife, the Empress, would come in, and stop her husband from it, will she not?
Some such guesses and fantasies they would weave from their minds and discuss them
with hilarity among themselves. It was funny to hear them talking thus. The warder in
these chats with his prisoners hardly knew how time had flown, how three hours had
sped, and his patrolling was at an end. The prisoner did not feel the arduousness of the
labour on Kolu, while he was wrapt in such conversation. For the jolliest of them, feeling
the heaviness of the handle they were pushing along the rut, regaled themselves with the
exclamation, "Friend Kolu, turn and turn. It is only for a few days now that we shall be
working on you. None will turn you, then, round and round. Then rest and rust." One
would set the tune and the rest would make the chorus, "Yes, dear Kolu, turn; for we are
to be with you for a few days now." In that frenzied mood, they would turn the wheel
faster and faster, and often did the work of an hour in half the time. This was true not
only of prisoners on hard labour, but also of petty officers and jemadars ordered to watch
on them. They themselves were prisoners on twenty to twenty-five years' term of
Imprisonment. Tindals and petty officers used somehow to finish their duty as
supervisors—three to four hours at the most—and spent the rest of the day mourning
their lot But since the outbreak of the war, they brought some news from the world
without, and kept on discussing it wild the veteran convicts and drew a pleasant picture of
Instant freedom by the overthrow of British Rule in India as the result of the conquest of
Great Britain by Germany. They tattered the news to pieces, even as the Kolu would
crush the coconut pieces into oil by turning round and round on them. While he was
wrapt in this talk, another petty officer came up and then the former realised that his time
was over and he must leave the scene. "Three hours gone, how quickly time passes, the
hour has sounded. I must leave. I knew not how it had gone",—such was the mutual