On another day, he broke up the lock-step line in its morning march from cell-house to dining-hall. Jennings commanded the line that day. He stood near the wall, fifty feet from the line as it passed. With a furtive movement, 9009 threw from him a piece of plug tobacco which he had traded from another convict for a pair of hoarded shoe-laces. It lit on the ground, twenty feet from Jennings, unseen of all. Then, very calmly, 9009 stepped out of the line and walked toward Jennings. Immediately voices rose; from the wall a rifle cracked; a bullet struck the ground at 9009’s feet. Disdainfully he stooped, picked up the tobacco, placed it between his teeth, and shuffled back to the line. He had been unable to get nearer than the twenty feet from Jennings.
For this he was given the water-cure. Fettered to a ring stapled in the stone wall of the corridor leading to the dungeon, he stood before the captain of the yard, who played upon his face the powerful stream of a hose till he was half-drowned and chilled to the marrow.
