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

their tremendous sloe. The high wall of that mighty prison was adorned at the top with a
festoon of manacles of every size and shape, and worked into the form of hideous-
looking flowers. Heavy shackles for the feet, iron bands for the arms, and several similar
instruments of torture were hanging down from the wall, right in front of me. They had a
grimness and beauty all their own, for they were befitting ornaments of the horrible
dungeon I had entered. The bayonets-the rifles-the shackles- the handcuffs-these were the
proper lay-out of that hall of torture, of that big ghastly prison, as appropriate to it as the
neat and fine garments that become an executioner, when he escorts his victim to the
block. I had read many a work dealing with the history of revolutionary movements all
over the world, and also autobiographies of martyrs in those struggles for Independence.
The descriptions in those works of the prisons in which they were confined were
harrowing enough. And they had exactly reproduced, I felt, what I was seeing before me
now. The two surly sergeants had made me stand up, that I might behold the scene and be
thoroughly downcast in soul by it. The hideous scene was staring me in the face and I
was staring at it with an eye as stern as the scene itself. I did not turn my gaze from him,
as he did not lower his eyes before mane. We seemed to understand each other, and
rightly had we measured each other's strength. I had a mysterious satisfaction that I was
here experiencing what I had read in the books, and that I was standing up in the jaws of
this horrible monster, as it were, without being ground down by its teeth. I stood calm
and composed, fearless in mind and body, and without a tremor in my limbs I had written
a poem, "The Two Images" in the Briston prison in London. Lines in that poem came up
ill my mind now. I began to revolve those lines; and my heart thrilled with their
utterance:-"Victory to the Goddess of Freedom."

Mr. Barrie's Counsel of Perfection

I had almost recovered from this maelstrom of emotion when I beheld a stout,
corpulent European Officer, carrying in its hand a big stick as formidable as himself,
standing right in front of me and watching me from head to foot. This was Mr. Barrie and
he had announced his name that it might fall upon my ears before he was himself on the
scene. He had expected me to look out for him with fear in my eyes, to cow down before
him, but I had not noticed him as my mind was absorbed in the feeling of defiance which
it had conjured up as a reaction against the fearful present that was facing me In those
few minutes he kept on watching me. My eyes caught him in that process when he
gruffly turned to the sergeant and said, "Leave him; he is not a tiger." Then, pointing his
big stick at me, he went on, "Well, are you the man who treed to escape at Marseilles?" I
answered his bold query in a similar independent but self controlled tone. "Yes, why do
you ask me that question?" The tone lowered slightly the temper of the man before me.
And he added, as if in a mood of curiosity, "Why did you do that?" "You ask me the
reason why? Well, one of the reasons was to spare myself all future trouble ." "But did
you not invite the trouble upon yourself?" "Yes, but that was because I felt that it was my
duty to do so And I may add, Mr. Barrie, that I also felt that it was my duty to be rid of
it." "Look here" said he, "I am not an Englishman. I am an Irishman." He pretended to
be as frank with me as I was frank with him. I intervened, "But I would not have hated
you for being an Englishman. I have spent the best years of my life in England, and I am