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

place. As if to checkmate this fictitious move, Mr., Barrie planted a fully armed posse of
soldiers on a platform in the centre of our prison. This was in addition to the regiment of
British soldiers specially detailed to be on patrolling duty all over the prison. This order
continued for many months after the cessation of the war in Europe. After the incident of
the Emden, I was subjected to the strictest surveillance. And that gave the traitors among
us a chance to raise all sorts of rumours against me, and to convey them to the jailor and
the Superintendent above him. They were busy propitiating these tin-gods in any manner
they liked.

When a regiment of British soldiers came to be planted in the island, this mood of
our friends had found a special outlet to vent itself against us. The Tommies had no
means of amusement and recreation in the barren and sordid atmosphere of this prison.
Our friends were kind enough to furnish the entertainment. They invented all sorts of
stories about me and about my former revolutionary activities; about my machinations in
this prison; and about my secret connections with Germany. Full of fervour and -spice
they told the stories to the soldiers in order to entertain them. What those stories were,
how the soldiers were regaled by them, what the officers said about me in their serious
discussions over the possible movements of the Emden,—full of the real and imaginary
in them—all this finds its proper place in what the famous "Ditcher" of the 'Capital' of
Calcutta wrote of these events later on in his weekly notes for that paper. I may mention
more about it as I pass on.

It was not so easy there to control us, and especially the political prisoners! The
officers and the authorities must have imagined that our transportation to the jail in the
Andamans was our death-in-life, the end of all our activities, our burial in the grave-yard
of the Andamans from which no resurrection was possible. And, therefore, they need no
more think of us and be anxious over us. But the world had not forgotten though we lay
buried here. On the other hand, they thought and spoke and wrote about the Andamans in
the world without, because of the political prisoners confined in that island. And the jail
had been turned into a living fortress, strongly armed and keenly guarded, and the seas
were protected by dreadnoughts and submarines, for fear of our escape from it, in order
to keep us safe within.

That our compatriots in India should so remember us, so cherish our memory,
when we lay as prisoners in the Andamans and dead to the world without, filled our
hearts with gratitude to them. And even in that dark dungeon of a prison-house, in the
conditions of utter despair and horrid physical and mental torture, this living memory
about us gave us hope and courage which I feel it my duty to record in these pages. Every
day we were in fear that a fresh charge of sedition and high treason might be trumped up
against us as the result of a systematic campaign of misrepresentation going on against us
during these days of war. And who misrepresented us and carried tales against us? Our
own men, the renegades among us, who had allied themselves with Mr. Barrie to save
their own skins!