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"After two years of heartbreaking toil at the mines my health utterly
broke down. One day I fell fainting under the lash of the brutal
overseer, and as I lay on the ground he ran at me and kicked me twice
with his heavy iron-shod boots, once on the hip, breaking the bone, and
once on the lower part of the spine, crushing the spinal cord, and
paralysing my lower limbs for ever.
"As this did not rouse me from my fainting-fit, the heartless fiend
snatched a torch from the wall of the mine-gallery and thrust the
burning end in my long thick beard, setting it on fire and scorching my
flesh horribly, as you can see. I was carried out of the mine and taken
to the convict hospital, where I lay for weeks between life and death,
and only lived instead of died because of the quenchless spirit that was
within me crying out for vengeance on my tormentors.
"When I came back to consciousness, the first thing I learnt was that I
was free to return to England on condition that I did not stop on my way
through Russia.
"My friends, urged on by the tireless energy of my wife's anxious love,
had at last found out what had befallen me, and proceedings had been
instituted to establish the innocence that had been betrayed by a common
and too well-known device used by the Russian police to secure the
conviction and removal of those who have become obnoxious to the
bureaucracy.
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