Everyone stripped. I saw there was going to be a search and I put my bare right foot over the scalpel, taking my weight on the left, because the blade was cutting into me. Nevertheless my foot covered the scalpel. Four warders came inside the cage and began rummaging through the shoes and clothes. Before they came in they left their weapons outside and the door was closed on them, but those who were the other side of the bars kept watch on us, keeping us covered. ‘The first man to stir is a goner,’ said a head screw’s voice. During the search they found three knives, two long roofing-nails, sharpened, a corkscrew, and a gold charger. Six men were brought out on to the deck, still naked. Major Barrot, the officer in command of the convoy, appeared together with two colonial army doctors and the captain of the ship. When the screws left our cage everyone dressed again, without waiting for the order. I picked up my scalpel.
The warders moved back to the far end of the deck. In the middle there was Barrot, just by the companion-way, with the other officers. The six naked men were lined up opposite them, standing to attention.
‘This is his,’ said the screw who had conducted the search, picking up a knife and pointing to its owner.
‘Fair enough. It’s mine.’
‘Right,’ said Barrot. ‘He’ll make the rest of the voyage in a cell over the engines.’
Each man was pointed out as responsible either for the nails, or the corkscrew or the knives, and each acknowledged that the weapon that had been found belonged to him. Each one, still naked, went up the ladder, accompanied by two screws. Lying there on the floor there was still one knife and the gold charger: and only one man for both of them. He was young – twenty-three or twenty-five – well-built, at least five foot ten, athletic, blue eyes.
‘This is yours, isn’t it?’ said the screw, holding out the gold charger.
‘Yes, it’s mine.’
‘What’s in it?’ asked Major Barrot, taking it.
‘Three hundred pounds sterling, two hundred dollars and two five-carat diamonds.’
‘Right. We’ll have a look.’ He opened it. The major was surrounded by other people and we couldn’t see a thing. But we heard him say, ‘Just so. What’s your name?’
‘Salvidia Romeo.’
‘You’re Italian?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’ll not be punished for the charger: but you will be for the knife.’
‘Excuse me, but the knife isn’t mine.’
‘Don’t talk balls,’ said the screw, ‘I found it in your shoe.’
‘I say again the knife isn’t mine.’
‘So I’m lying, am I?’
‘No, you’re just mistaken.’
‘Whose is the knife, then?’ asked Major Barrot. ‘If it’s not yours, it must be somebody’s.’
‘It’s not mine, that’s all.’
‘If you don’t want to be put in the punishment cell – and you’ll fry there, because it’s over the boiler – just tell me whose the knife is.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you trying to make a fool of me? A knife’s found in your shoe and you don’t know whose it is? Do you think I’m a fool? Either it’s yours or you know whose it is. Speak up.’
‘It’s not mine and it’s not for me to say whose it is. I’m not an informer. You don’t by any chance think I look like a bleeding prison officer, do you?’
‘Warder, put on the handcuffs. This kind of undisciplined conduct costs a packet, my friend.’
The two commanding officers, the captain of the ship and the head of the convoy, talked privately. The captain gave an order to a quartermaster, who went up on deck. A few moments later a Breton sailor appeared, a giant of a man, with a wooden bucket of sea water and a rope as thick as your wrist. The convict was tied to the bottom step of the ladder, on his knees. The sailor wetted the rope in the bucket and then deliberately, with all his strength, he set about flogging the poor devil’s back and buttocks. Not a sound came from the convict: blood flowed from his buttocks and his sides. A shout from our cage broke the graveyard silence. ‘You bloody sods!’
That was all that was needed to start everybody roaring. ‘Murderers! Swine! Bastards!’ The more they threatened to fire if we did not shut up the more we bellowed until suddenly the captain shouted, ‘Turn on the steam!’
Sailors turned various wheels and jets of steam shot out at us with such force that in a split second everyone was flat on his belly. The jets came at chest-height. We were all struck with panic. The men who had been scalded dared not cry out. The whole thing lasted under a minute, but it terrified every man there.
‘I hope you obstinate brutes have grasped what I mean. The slightest trouble, and I turn on the steam. You get me? Stand up!’
Only three men had been seriously scalded. They were taken to the sick-bay. The man who had been flogged was put back with us. Six years later he died while making a break with me.
During those eighteen days of the voyage we had plenty of time to try to learn about what was coming or to get at least some notion of the penal settlement. Yet when we got this nothing turned out quite as we had expected, although Julot had done his very best to pass on his knowledge.
We did know that Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni was a village seventy-five miles from the sea on a river called the Maroni. Julot told us about it. ‘That’s the village that has the prison, the one that’s the centre of the penal settlement. That’s where they sort you out according to your category. The preventive detentions go straight to a prison called Saint-Jean, about ninety miles away. The right convicts are separated into three groups. First the ones labelled very dangerous: as soon as they arrive they’re called out and shoved into cells in the punishment-block until they can be transferred to the Iles du Salut. There they are interned either for a given number of years or for life. These islands are three hundred miles and more from Saint-Laurent and sixty from Cayenne. There are three of them. Royale, the biggest; Saint-Joseph, which has the settlement’s solitary-confinement prison; and Devil’s Island, the smallest of them all. Apart from a very few exceptions, convicts don’t go to Devil’s Island. The people there are politicals. Then comes dangerous, second category: they stay at the Saint-Laurent camp, and they’re put to gardening and working on the land. Whenever there’s a need for men they’re sent to the very tough camps – Camp Forestier, Charvin, Cascade, Crique Rouge and Kilometre 42, the one they call the death camp. Then there’s the ordinary category: they’re given jobs in the offices and kitchens, or put to cleaning in the village and the camp, or they’re sent to the different workshops – carpentry, painting, blacksmith’s shop, electricity, mattress-making, tailor’s shop, laundry and so on. So zero hour is the moment you get there. If you’re called out and taken to a cell, that means you’re going to be interned on the islands, so good-bye to any hope of escape. There’s only one chance, and that’s to mutilate yourself quick – open your knee or your belly so as to get into the hospital and escape from there. At all costs you have to avoid going to the islands. There’s one other hope: if the ship that’s to take the internees to the islands isn’t ready you can bring out your money and offer it to the medical orderly. He’ll give you a shot of turpentine in a joint or draw a urine-soaked hair through a cut so that it’ll go bad. Or he’ll give you sulphur to inhale and then tell the doctor you’ve got a temperature of 102. During those few days of waiting you have to get into hospital, no matter what it costs.
‘If you’re not called out but left with the others in the huts at the camp, then you have time to get working. If this happens, you mustn’t look for a job inside the camp. What you want to do is to pay the