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Show THE WORLD'S WORST PRISON lies du Salut Isles of Salvation Create Living Death That Terrifies Hardest Criminals; Horrors of Bear Fits, Guillotine and Disease Are Unbelievable C i " x, x ' ... .... . t " x " S i S - x V ' ' - x - s " y s xxx--' ' ' K -M . -.v., 1N N X J , j i " .-. ;s ,:x. v -t-x . T 2- ' ' v ' " ix -xi x ; v , te txK j X X $ xx, xX x, . - , . , ' ' X N X xx V . P A - - pxXXXX - X, l i ? : i , f : 1 ' C ; ' - --W i; . k ; I . If i xxx..x-x J . ! i '.x I . Ik ; " :. v- ' ' fx I - , " xC .x x XV ' f V X I - x x xx . x I - , t'7 -1 ! x N x -'- ; c l . t , - x " M I X Ox4 - Q - - The Devil's island grave digger, sSown above, never has long to wait for corpses (11. The convicts, locked behind be-hind iron bars, dream only of escape (2). Kichard Halliburton found these things out when he lived with the prisoners. pris-oners. He is shown with four of them in the picture at the right, above (3). By KICHARD HALXJECKTON Author of "The Royal Road to Romance," etc. ONCE a year, from La Ro-chelle Ro-chelle in France, a ship departs, bearing the most tragic cargo ever carried across the sea. It is the Mar-tiniere, Mar-tiniere, and aboard her, herded in three cages, are six hundred convicts bound for Devil's Island penal colony, col-ony, in French Guiana on the north coast of South America. Ameri-ca. Within twelve months after arrival, three hundred will be dead. Within seven years, five hundred will b dead. Within twenty years, perhaps only one will still remain. re-main. Of the six hundred, twelve will have escaped. Of those twelve, not half will see the shores of France again. . . . The dry guillotine! Locked in their cages, the de-portes de-portes spend 20 diys en route. They are well behaved, lor there are iron pipes all yxound, filled with sieam which can flood the cages in case of mutiny. Twelve hour? before reaching St Laurent, the town on the Maroni river where the cargo will disembark, disem-bark, the Martiniere passes close to three beautiful palm-shaded islands, is-lands, each about 20 acres in extent, ex-tent, known a3 the Des du Salut. The Isles of Salvation ironic name! On two of these islands, St Joseph and He Royale, several hundred men lie rotting in pest-houses and punishment cells, while on the third, He du Diable, are cast away the most despised class of all criminalstraitors crimi-nalstraitors and spies. For Political Prisoners Only. On lie du Diable itself, the loveliest love-liest of all, the convicts will never set foot unless they are political prisoners. Nevertheless, they look at it with intense interest, for its name has rung around the world ever since Captain Dreyfus' imprisonment impris-onment there, 35 years ago, brought France to the brink of revolution and caused the entire penal colony to be known thenceforth as Devil's island. All the way out from France the chief topic of discussion has been the possibility and the methods of escape. But for every man who finds freedom, free-dom, 50 are recaptured and sent to tie infamous "blockhouse" to await trial. The tribunal sits only three times a year, so the prisoners may have to endure four months of special spe-cial detention. The blockhouse is designed for punishment In the ordinary barracks, bar-racks, where the well-behaved convicts con-victs live, they sleep on canvas hammocks, earn a few sous a day for cigarettes, and are fed enough to get along. But in the blockhouse they sleep on planks with their feet manacled to an iron bar. They are allowed no exercise, no tobacco, and no release from the one common bull-pen, except to empty, once a day, their wooden toilet buckets. The heat and the stench are almost overpowering. When their trial comes round, many of the victims have obliged the authorities by dying. dy-ing. And then, as if the blockhouse were not pain enough, the tribunal sentences the offender (for a first evasion) to 30 days in the "bear-pits" "bear-pits" on lie St Joseph. If it's a second attempt the prisoner gets six months. For a third attempt he will get a year. The Cnforgivable Crime. It takes just one failure to teach the newcomer that evasion is the one unforgivable crime. There is a murder a week; there are stabbings and robberies and violence of a hundred kinds. But these offenses get small attention from the judges. A murdered murderer is a good riddance. But evasion! This guarantees guar-antees for the malefactor rigorous punishment. And when one remembers remem-bers that of 10,000 evasions in the last ten years, only some 200 have succeeded, one can realize how much punishment the bear-pits on St Joseph have inflicted. The tribunal was not in action while- I was in Guiana, but I had plenty of opportunity to witness the results of its sentences. The barracks on lie Royale were even less fit for human occupation than those I had seen in St. Laurent yet into each one, 80 prisoners were crowded. They were the most I wretched convicts in all Guiana, for the islands are the "health resort" of the colony, and collect the prisoners pris-oners who are dying from tuberculosis tuberculo-sis and malaria. Mixed with these are the incorrigibles, the irredeem-ables, irredeem-ables, who have been sent here for repeated offenses on the mainland. The next island, lie du Diable itself, it-self, is one great coconut grove. It is more beautiful than Royale, but even unhappier, because its handful hand-ful of traitor-prisoners are cut oft from all contact with their fellow men. They live, each alone, in little lit-tle shacks, avoided and despised. They never see a new face, except when another traitor comes to join them. There is not the remotest chance of "their being able to escape es-cape escape, the dream, the hope, that keeps alive the spirit of the other deportes. Horror of the Bear-Pits. But compared to He St. Joseph, both Royale and Diable are little heavens of joy and freedom. On St. Joseph are the bear-pits where the evasionists are sent for punishment. Here are the utter depths. I've seen my share of prisons, but I've never seen anything as barbarous bar-barous as these bear-pits. 'They are built In a grim, silent building that is like nothing else in the world. It consists of three iron-roofed sheds, each 300 feet long. Inside each shed, 80 cages are arranged in two parallel par-allel lines. These cages are really windowless pits. 12 feet long, 7 feet wide, and 12 feet deep, of thick concrete. Through a shutter In a solid door, the food and toilet buckets buck-ets are passed. The pits have no roofs, only grills of heavy bars. A central wall 20 feet high, reaching . half way to the shed roof and running run-ning the length of the building, separates sep-arates the two lines of cells. Along the top of this wall is a railed runway. run-way. Here the guards walk their beats, back and forth, looking down on either side through the bars Into each bear-pit and upon each of the caged animals. Nothing Noth-ing escapes the gaze of the passing officer. Nothing can be hidden. Inside In-side each cage there are one wooden wood-en bench, two small wooden buckets, buck-ets, one blanket, and one man. That is all. High over everything arches the vast iron roof that keeps out the sun and the rain. On very bright days it is gloomy in the pits. On dark days, there is almost no light at all. At night, no lamps are lighted, and from twilight to dawn it is completely black. Escorted by a guard, I entered one of these somber sheds, climbed the ladder of the central wall and moved along the railed walk. Half the men beneath this particular roof were mad. For they go mad never nev-er allowed to speak, to smoke, to escape the scrutinizing eye of the military lynx above; having to live month after month in this still, dark tomb. And when their minds do crack, they are simply moved from the sane end to the insane end. The cells are all alike; the treatment treat-ment the same. Seek Self-infection. There is one escape to get sick enough for removal to the hospital on lie Royale. One doesn't get sick so easily, cut off from all infection. So the prisoners poison themselves with pus from scurvied gums, or mortify their flesh in any other way that the four walls of their cells permit Sometimes, if they're lucky, gangrene gan-grene does set in. The doctor makes his rounds on Thursdays, so the job must be done on Tuesdays, in order that the inflammation may be sufficient suffi-cient to force his attention. If this desperate hoax works, the prisoner prison-er is removed. He may lose his arm, or toe of blood poisoning, but at least he has seen the sky and the sea again, he has spoken to another human being, perhaps even smoked a cigarette, and he won't mind dying now. The Guillotiner Explains. All the deaths on the islands, however, how-ever, are not from disease. One day I passed a convict wearing a long black beard. He was the guillotiner, guillotin-er, and the beard his sign of office. "You get well paid?" I asked, a bit faint "Yes, a hundred francs a Job," he answered. "I send it to my wife in France." BeU Syndicate. WNU Servlc. |