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The Jacket (The Star-Rover)-Part8_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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"Then why worry?" came the voice. "You'll be dead pretty quick an'

out of it. Go ahead and croak, but don't make so much noise about



it. You're interruptin' my beauty sleep."

So angered was I by this callous indifference that I recovered self-



control and was guilty of no more than smothered groans. This

endured an endless time--possibly ten minutes; and then a tingling



numbness set up in all my body. It was like pins and needles, and

for as long as it hurt like pins and needles I kept my head. But



when the prickling of the multitudinous darts ceased to hurt and

only the numbness remained and continued verging into greater



numbness I once more grew frightened.

"How am I goin' to get a wink of sleep?" my neighbour, complained.



"I ain't any more happy than you. My jacket's just as tight as

yourn, an' I want to sleep an' forget it."



"How long have you been in?" I asked, thinking him a new-comer

compared to the centuries I had already suffered.



"Since day before yesterday," was his answer.

"I mean in the jacket," I amended.



"Since day before yesterday, brother."

"My God!" I screamed.



"Yes, brother, fifty straight hours, an' you don't hear me raisin' a

roar about it. They cinched me with their feet in my back. I am



some tight, believe ME. You ain't the only one that's got troubles.

You ain't ben in an hour yet."



"I've been in hours and hours," I protested.

"Brother, you may think so, but it don't make it so. I'm just



tellin' you you ain't ben in an hour. I heard 'm lacin' you."

The thing was incredible. Already, in less than an hour, I had died



a thousand deaths. And yet this neighbour, balanced and equable,

calm-voiced and almost beneficent despite the harshness of his first



remarks, had been in the jacket fifty hours!

"How much longer are they going to keep you in?" I asked.



"The Lord only knows. Captain Jamie is real peeved with me, an' he

won't let me out until I'm about croakin'. Now, brother, I'm going



to give you the tip. The only way is shut your face an' forget it.

Yellin' an' hollerin' don't win you no money in this joint. An' the



way to forget is to forget. Just get to rememberin' every girl you

ever knew. That'll cat up hours for you. Mebbe you'll feel



yourself gettin' woozy. Well, get woozy. You can't beat that for

killin' time. An' when the girls won't hold you, get to thinkin' of



the fellows you got it in for, an' what you'd do to 'em if you got a

chance, an' what you're goin' to do to 'em when you get that same



chance."

That man was Philadelphia Red. Because of prior conviction he was



serving fifty years for highwayrobbery committed on the streets of

Alameda. He had already served a dozen of his years at the time he



talked to me in the jacket, and that was seven years ago. He was

one of the forty lifers who were double-crossed by Cecil Winwood.



For that offence Philadelphia Red lost his credits. He is middle-

aged now, and he is still in San Quentin. If he survives he will be



an old man when they let him out.

I lived through my twenty-four hours, and I have never been the same



man since. Oh, I don't mean physically, although next morning, when

they unlaced me, I was semi-paralyzed and in such a state of



collapse that the guards had to kick me in the ribs to make me crawl

to my feet. But I was a changed man mentally, morally. The brute



physicaltorture of it was humiliation and affront to my spirit and

to my sense of justice. Such discipline does not sweeten a man. I



emerged from that first jacketing filled with a bitterness and a

passionate hatred that has only increased through the years. My



God--when I think of the things men have done to me! Twenty-four

hours in the jacket! Little I thought that morning when they kicked



me to my feet that the time would come when twenty-four hours in the

jacket meant nothing; when a hundred hours in the jacket found me



smiling when they released me; when two hundred and forty hours in

the jacket found the same smile on my lips.



Yes, two hundred and forty hours. Dear cotton-woolly citizen, do

you know what that means? It means ten days and ten nights in the



jacket. Of course, such things are not done anywhere in the

Christian world nineteen hundred years after Christ. I don't ask



you to believe me. I don't believe it myself. I merely know that

it was done to me in San Quentin, and that I lived to laugh at them



and to compel them to get rid of me by swinging me off because I

bloodied a guard's nose.



I write these lines to-day in the Year of Our Lord 1913, and to-day,




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