Imprisonment (1824)

C H A P T E R X V I

Imprisonment

[ 1824 l

ATE in the afternoon of Tuesday, June 8, 1824, about two weeks after the first news of the attack on Rangoon, Adoniram and Nancy were in their little wooden house getting ready to sit down to dinner. Outside, the masons were at work on the brick house. The neighborhood sounds filtered in through the board walls as usual—the high cries and laughter of children, the penetrating voices of women, the deeper tones of the masons conversing as they worked on the walls.

All at once there was a commotion. Adoniram and Nancy stopped their preparations and looked at each other in wonderment. Before either had time to say a word, the door of the house flew open and a dozen or more native Burmese men rushed in. One was an official who carried a black book. With him was a man who bore a circle or spot tattooed on each cheek. They knew what he was—a “Spotted Face”—a branded criminal who had been turned into an executioner and keeper of the prison. The Spotted Faces, feared by everyone in Burma, were called “Children of the Prison.” They lived outside the pale of society and married only their own kind. Some had the name of their crime branded into their foreheads or chests. The cars of some had been CUt off. Others had no noses, or had been deprived of one eye. They took joy in inflicting similar acts of mayhem on those who fell into their hands.

“Where is the teacher?” called out the official.

Adoniram stepped out in front of him. “Here.”

“You are called by the king,” said the officer — the formal words used in arresting criminals. The words were no more than spoken before the Spotted Face sprang at Adoniram and threw him on the floor. Kneeling on him, he brought forth the dreaded small, hard cord carried by Spotted Faces and from behind slipped it around Adoniram’s arms above the elbow.

The cord was used almost more as an instrument of torture than of control. It cut deep. Often it dislocated the arms of its victims. It could be pulled back so hard as to cut off the breath. Sometimes, drawn tight enough, it could make blood Spurt from the nose and mouth of the prisoner until he dropped dead.

Nancy caught hold of the arm of the Spotted Face. “Stay!” she pleaded. “I will. give you money.”

“Arrest her too,” ordered the official. “She is also a foreigner.” Adoniram, struggling to his knees, begged the official to leave Nancy alone until he had specific orders to take her. Nancy, meanwhile, offered money again and again to the Spotted Face if he would remove the cord. Koo-chil the cook and the Bengalese servants, who had been about to serve dinner, stood aghast. Their fear of the officials was hardly greater than their incredulity at the way Adoniram was being treated.

But the Spotted Face dragged Adoniram out of the house, followed by the officials and his retainers. Nancy had to be dragged apart from her husband.

By now the whole neighborhood was in turmoil. The workmen on the brick house took one look, threw down their tools, and ran for their lives. The people living for blocks around had collected in the street. The little Burmese children cried and screamed with fear.

The Spotted Face paid no attention. Nancy, standing in the doorway with a handful of silver, now saw Adoniram hauled away. With a quick inspiration she handed the silver to Maung Ing, who was pale as a ghost beneath his bronze. “Take it and follow,” she said. “Perhaps you can make the Spotted Face loosen the cord.” Maung Ing followed, at a respectful distance. Only a few hundred feet from the house the Spotted Face threw Adoniram flat on the ground again, and tightened the cord still harder.

Maung Ing tagged after the party closely. Once he managed to slip ten ticals in silver into the Spotted Face’s hand. The cord was loosened a little, but even so Adoniram was dragged, sometimes walking, sometimes jerked off his feet by the cord, to the palace used as courthouse. Here the governor of the city and his staff were collected. The governor was shocked by the harshness the Spotted Face had used, and told him to take off the cord. But already Adoniram’s arms were swollen and bleeding.

One of the officers read the official order. The teacher was consigned to the dreaded Let-may-yoon. In Burmese the expression meant “Hand Shrink Not,” but the English foreigners called it “the Death Prison.”

Maung Ing followed on the long hot walk to the Death Prison. He saw Adoniram taken inside the stockade. He saw the door close. Then he turned and went slowly home to tell Nancy what had happened.

The ruler of the prison met Adoniram at the gate with a grin which was to become familiar. The word branded on his breast, Adoniram saw, was Loo-that: “Murderer.” He addressed Adoniram as “beloved child”—all the prisoners were his beloved children, so he said, and insisted that they in turn call him “Aphe” —- “Father.”

In the center of the prison yard stood a block of granite. Two of the Spotted Faces lifted Adoniram’s feet to the block, and Father joked while riveting three pairs of ankle fetters with an iron maul.

“Now, walk, my child,” he chuckled. Adoniram took one step and fell on his face in the hot dust. With a laugh the Spotted Faces picked him up and huStIed him through the bamboo wicket of the prison building. By now his face was covered with dirt, his hair in disarray, his clothing tattered from the dragging.

Inside the windowless prison he stood blinded by darkness, overwhelmed with heat, almost gagging at the indescribable stench. But he had no time to reflect. Another Spotted Face—~an apprentice still serving out his own time in fetters, but allowed to carry a club —-half led, half pushed him with the club into a far corner and forced him to lie down on the littered floor.

The guard warned him to keep silence. He did, but as his eyes slowly adjusted to the deep gloom he saw Henry Gouger in the corner, next to Captain Laird. Even Mr. Rodgers was there.

Now Adoniram could see that the prison consisted of one room about thirty feet wide by forty long. It lacked windows and had only one small door, but a little light filtered in through the cracks. Perhaps fifty prisoners lay fettered on the teakwood floor, all nearly naked. Not all were men. A few women lay among them. Some were obviously near death. About a dozen men lay with one or both ankles in a huge set of Stocks, which consisted of one heavy log lying on another. Here and there were other smaller sets of Stocks, each holding one or two men.

Hanging from the ceiling was a long, horizontal bamboo pole, suspended from pulleys. A block-and-tackle arrangement at the ends permitted it to be raised or lowered. Whispering, Adoniram asked Gouger what it was, but the Englishman could not tell him. In the center of the room stood a tripod on which had been placed a large earthen cup filled with earth-oil, crude petroleum. At dusk the fettered guard lighted it. The feeble, smoky flame supplied only a little light, but that little was nearly as much as leaked in from outside.

Before it was quite dark, the wicket opened once more and Price was brought in. He too showed signs of rough handling. He turned to the guard and began a voluble complaint. The guard flourished his club in the doctor’s face, and for a moment Adoniram and Gouger thought Price, even in fetters, would spring at him. But the club made him think better of it, and after a little grumbling he allowed himself to be led over to the other foreigners, where he lay down silent and at leaSt momentarily subdued.

In. a little while night fell. Father entered with a couple of his assiStants. With jeSts and jokes, they lowered the long horizontal bamboo pole from the ceiling, passed it between the fettered legs of the prisoners, re-secured it at the ends, and hoiSted it up with the aid of the block-and-tackle. Gradually the feet of the prisoners rose into the air until only their shoulders and heads reSted on the floor. When Father made sure of the height—he told them he wanted to protect their lives—he wished them a good night’s reSt and departed.

The young guard trimmed the lamp, lit his pipe at the flame, and lit pipes for the other prisoners. Everyone smoked to try to counteract that awful stench.

Next to Henry Gouger on the bamboo was a prisoner named Kewet-nee. In a low voice he told the foreigners about the tortures he had seen. He left no doubt that they might expect them too. Other prisoners agreed.

Gouger, Adoniram learned, had been in custody in Stocks near the king’s stables for nearly two weeks while the examiners questioned him and examined his records. Now it was plain that the government had decided all the white men were spies. They could only hope death would come without the usual tortures.

Gradually the sounds died, except for low nightmare groans and the rustling of the vermin in the debris on the floor.

Adoniram, his hair and neck in filth, his arms sore from the cut of the cord, his ankles already chafed raw from the three pairs of heavy iron fetters on his elevated feet, was alone with his thoughts.

They were bitter and depressed. What had he brought to those who depended on him? Nothing but death. Death for Harriet Atwood—for in a way, he had been responsible for her becoming a missionary. Death for his only son. Now death for himself, probably death for Nancy. And what was there to show for it? Eighteen converts in the twelve years since he had left Salem. Of those, probably only a few would remain faithful—if they survived. Eighteen souls for all those years and lives. And the Burmese New Testament. But most of that was in manuscript, in the little wooden house by the river. Almost certainly it would be destroyed or lost. That left only the souls. The thought of those souls beside him at the throne of God would ordinarily have seemed compensation, but this dreadful night it did not. Deep in depression he lost hope for himself and for Nancy.

Nancy was nearly frantic that evening when Maung Ing returned with the news that Adoniram had been taken to the Death Prison. She calmed her little girl pupils as well as she could, but the Burmese converts and the Bengali servants knew only too well what the Death Prison meant.

After a few minutes she retired to her room and prayed as she had never prayed before for strength to bear what was to come. But she had little time, for presently the magistrate came up on the veranda and began shouting for her to come out and be examined. After repeated commands she came, but not until she had rushed through the house and destroyed all her letters, journals and writings. It would be suicidal to let the government know that she and Adoniram had corresponded with friends in England and kept a day-by-day account of the details of their life in Burma.

When the destruction was finished, she went out and submitted to the magiStrate. He asked her every entrapping question he could think of; but he gor nowhere. He went away unsatisfied. Before he left he ordered the gates of the compound to be shut and directed that no one should be allowed to enter or leave. To enforce his command, he left “a guard of ten ruflians.”

By now it was dark. Nancy took the little girls with her into an inside room and barred the doors. The guards immediately became suspicious. From outside they ordered her “to unbar the doors and come out, or they would break the house down.” Nancy refused to obey. She threatened to complain of them to their masters in the morning. They gave up their attempt but took revenge by placing the two Bengali servants in stocks in the most painful position they could think of. This had the desired effect. Nancy “called the head man to a window, and promised to make them all a present in the morning, if they would release the servants.”

After threats, arguments and much bargaining they agreed. Nancy went to bed but not to sleep. All night long she lay wakeful, inventing and discarding one fantaStic plan after another.

In the morning she sent Maung Ing to see whether Adoniram was still alive, with food in case he was. Maung Ing soon came back with word that the foreigners were still living, but in the heart of the Death Prison, confined with three pairs of fetters each, and strung up on a long pole. The news struck nearly as much terror into Nancy’s heart as if she had heard Adoniram were already dead. But she persisted: when the magiStrate returned she pleaded with him to let her present the missionaries’ case before some of the government officials. He refused. He said he did not dare let her go, for fear she might escape. As a last resort, Nancy wrote a note to the sister of the king, the wife of the crippled Prince M., whom she had come to know fairly well, asking her to beg someone in authority to let the teachers go.

In a little while the note was returned with a message. The king’s sister “did not understand it.” Actually, Nancy learned later, she wanted to help but dared not brave the queen’s wrath—that sorceress whom everyone feared even more than the king.

There was nothing more Nancy could do. The day dragged on. As evening approached, she gave tea and cigars to the guard, in the successful hope that they would let her sleep in her room with out threatening her. In bed she lay awake for a long time. Finally, exhausted, she slept fitfully.

In the Death Prison, dawn brought a spectacle that Gouger was to remember nearly forty years later as “The sleeping convicts awoke one by one with a yawn, clanking their chains and shaking the swarm of loathsome vermin from their rags, only to scatter the plague upon their neighbors.”

Some of the native convicts began to intone their morning hymn in Pali. It consisted of just a few words, repeated over and over. The song had a certain haunting, melancholy beauty that would have been pleasant in another time and place. Now it was merely irritating.

With daylight Father appeared. Grinning broadly, he asked the prisoners solicitously how they had enjoyed the night. He lowered the bamboo to within about a foot of the floor. Slowly the blood began to circulate once more in numbed feet and legs. At about eight, the inmates were taken, eight to twelve at a time, into the prison yard for about five minutes to relieve themselves. This was the only time during the day they were permitted outside the inner prison.

At nine o’clock food came. Maung Ing had brought something for Adoniram, who by now was so bedraggled that his closest friends could hardly have recognized him. One of Gouger’s servants, a baker, courageously brought his employer some breakfast wrapped Up in a towel. By similar means the other foreign prisoners received something to eat. Most of the natives had food delivered to them by friends and relatives. The others had to depend on the charity of good-hearted Burmese who, mostly women, considered it an act of virtue to supply food for the prisoners. Especially during festival time huge baskets of rice and ngapi, wrapped in large, thick, glossy plantain leaves, were sent in. But since a week might go by with nothing, the friendless recipients rolled what was left over in the plantain leaves, pinned the rolls together with bamboo slivers, and saved them. In time both food and leaves—the latter accumulating inside the prison in heaps—decayed and added to the stench. There was a rumor that the king allowed a basket of rice :1 month to each prisoner, but no one had ever seen any of it.

Just as he finished his breakfast, Gouger was ordered outdoors by a jailer. The others could not say good-by to him on account of the ban on talking, but the looks they gave him were eloquent. He shufiled slowly and painfully out the door, the fetters chafing his raw ankles, almost relieved that he was to know his fate. At least, he would have a breath of fresh air for a few moments before death came.

But he was not to be executed. He was to be questioned by an assistant to the city governor, a Myo-serai (today a “myosa”), who was seated in a shed in the prison yard opposite the inner prison examining another prisoner.

The young man being examined was accused of robbing the house of a high-ranking personage. He denied the charge and to Gouger, a fair judge of men, he had not the look of a robber. But the magistrate considered his denial merely obstinacy. To help the prisoner talk, he was seated on a low stool, and his legs tied together above the knees by a cord. Two executioners each took a long pole, inserted the pole between his legs, and began to lever them up and down in opposite directions.

Gouger, his eyes bulging with horror, expected to hear the thighbones snap. But although the youth screamed in agony he still denied the accusation. At length he fainted. The guards threw cold water over him and thrust him back into his cell, promising something even better for him tomorrow.

This trifling matter disposed of, the Myo-serai turned his attention to Gouger. It was unusual for a Myo—serai to appear within the prison compound, and he considered it rather below his dignity to have to make prison examinations. Moreover, he was actually a man of inherent benevolence who preferred not to order torture.

Gouger did not know that, at the time. Yet for some reason unknown to himself, he felt unusually calm. He had spent the night anticipating torture and death and felt nothing could be worse than the agonizing deaths he had already died in anticipation. He was sure, of course, that the purpose of the examination was to get him to confess he was a Spy.

He was mistaken. All the Myo-serai wanted waS a schedule of his property and a list of everyone who owed him money. Gouger was relieved. The officials undoubtedly already had all of his property they could discover. As to the rest, including money owed him, they were welcome if they could collect. He immediately gave the magistrate the most accurate account he could. The mm] was very large. When the list had been written down, Gouger was taken back to the prison. He viewed this procedure as his last settling of accounts before his departure from earth.

During Gouger’s absence, the bamboo pole had been removed from between the prisoners’ legs and hoisted up to itS daytime position beneath the ceiling. A certain amount of subdued talking began among the inmates. The guard did nor interfere, and tones grew louder through the morning. Adoniram somewhat recovered his Spirits, and he and Gouger even began a certain amount of grim joking. Here and there, in spite of the discomfort, low laughs and chuckles could be heard occasionally from the other prisoners scattered on the floor.

But as three in the afternoon approached, the talking and joking Strangely diminished. Voices fell to whispers, or died away altogether. Finally the whole prison population was in a deep hush.

Promptly at three, a great gong hung in the Palace yard nearby was struck. As its deep tones pulsated through the air, the faces of the prisoners grew pale. The vibration did not fully die away before the wicket Opened and two SpOtted Faces appeared. Each went Straight to a man; those two prisoners rose without a word. Each had to follow a Spotted Face. There was never a sound except the scuffing of bare feet, and the clank of the fetters. Then the wicket closed. Those who had not been taken could breathe again—they had escaped death for another twenty-four hours.

Later that afternoon, the EurOpean contingent was increased by two. One was a Greek named Constantine, a native of ConStantinople. The other was a fairly well-to-do young merchant named Arrakeel, an Armenian. The other white men had never seen either one before and had never known, until now, that they lived in Ava.

These were the events of the day. At nightfall, Father supervised the raising of the prisonerS’ legs on the bamboo. The young jailer with the club lighted the lamp and the prisoners’ pipes, and once again the Let-may-yoon, the prison Hand Shrink Not, fell into silence.

The next day was much like the first. This time it was Adoniram’s turn for questioning. He saw the conclusion of the examination of the young man accused of robbery. The young man’s wrists were tied behind his back and the rope drawn up by a pulley until his toes barely touched the ground. After a while, just before his shoulders dislocated, he “confessed” by implicating two respectable citizens of Ava. This was intelligent. The officials now had two well-to-do men to fleece instead of one. The young man was returned to the prison nearly maimed. But as soon as the fleecing of the men he denounced was completed some days later, he was released in consideration of his services to the cause of justice.

Like Gouger, Adoniram had to give a list of his property. Unfortunately, he had also to admit that Gouger had supplied him with money. On his return he agreed with Gouger that the outlook now seemed hopeless.

Meanwhile Nancy had not been supine. That same day she had sent a message to the governor of the city, asking permission to pay him a visit in order to give him a present. This inducement had had its effect: soon orders came to the guards to allow the teacher Yoodthan’s wife to go into town.

She found the governor not uncourteous. When he asked her what she wanted, she told him that the foreigners were in the Death Prison and badly treated. The teachers, at leaSt, were Americans. They came from a different country from the English, and had nothing whatever to do with the war.

The governor considered this statement. Finally he said, “It is not in my power to release them from the prison, or from their irons. But I can make them more comfortable.” He indicated an official nearby. “There is my head officer. You must consult with him, as to how this is to be done.”

To Nancy, this man’s appearance “presented the most perfect assemblage of all the evil passions attached to human nature.” He took her aside and told her bluntly that the prisoners and she herself were completely at his disposal. What would be done for any of them would depend entirely on her liberality. Furthermore, any gift-giving must remain unknown to any other officials.

Nancy nodded. “What must I do to obtain a mitigation of the present sufierings of the two teachers?”

“Pay me two hundred ticals, two pieces of fine cloth, and two pieces of handkerchiefs.” Nancy had that much money with her —— it amounted to about $100 in American currency -— but of course not the cloth. She could not go home for the cloth and return to the prison—a four-mile round trip—in time to see Adoniram that day. She offered the money to the official and begged him not to insist on the cloth. He hesitated. Finally, unable to let so much silver out of his sight, he took it. In a few moments she had an order from the city governor, written on a palm leaf, as was customary, permitting her to enter the prison.

At the prison the guards scrutinized her order and grudgingly let her go as far as the bamboo wicket leading into the inner prison. Here they Stopped her while they called Adoniram.

As it happened, Gouger had been called at the same moment to pick up a bundle of food. He had no wish to have her see his chains, and Spoke to her as briefly as he could with courtesy. But she had scarcely more than a glance for him. She may not even have noticed his fetters, for her eyes were fixed on the darkness within.

Then she saw Adoniram coming out of the murk, crawling. Two days in prison had turned the most fastidious man she knew into a haggard, unshaven scarecrow, his usually Spotless white starched neckcloth a filthy rag, his neat black broadcloth suit disheveled, torn and smeared with fragments of rotting plantain leaves. She could scarcely recognize him. She gave him one long horrified incredulous look, and hid her face in her hands. This much Gouger saw before he turned his back. But that look and that gesture burned themselves into his memory forever.

For a moment Nancy gave way. Death she could face with some semblance of calm, perhaps even torture. But this degradation.. .! She was not prepared for it. It was too much to bear.

Soon, with a supreme effort, she conquered herself. They exchanged a few words of greeting, which she made as cheerful as she could. Adoniram had an idea about securing their release. Bribery would do it, if she went high enough up. But before he could say more, the Spotted Faces commanded her to go. She showed them the order from the city governor. She pleaded. “Get out,” they insisted harshly. “Get out or we will pull you out.” Weeping, the palm leaf inscribed with the useless order dangling from her hand, her tall figure drooping in the gorgeous silk Burmese costume she habitually wore, she went forlornly out the gate.

But the order was not ineffective. Before sunset, Adoniram, Price, Gouger, Laird, Rodgers and the other foreigners were moved out of the prison building into the open shed where the magistrate had sat. They were still as heavily fettered as ever, but here there were no vermin and rotting plantain leaves. Here air and sunlight streamed through the open side of the shed. True, from this unscreened place they could not help seeing the daily torture of prisoners undergoing interrogation with pole, cord and iron maul; and from so close the screams and cries rang in their ears unmuffled. But to such sights and sounds they were already becoming toughened. And meanwhile they rejoiced in the persistence, courage and love of Nancy Judson, and blessed her very name.