“May I not be permitted to receive certain supplies if I pay for them?  That is allowed in other prisons.”

The Governor shook his head.

“I can let you have a blanket,” he said, “and a pillow, or a sheepskin if you find it cold at first, but my power here is very limited, and, as I tell you, the officers have little more comfort than the prisoners.”

“Oh, I don’t care anything about comfort,” protested Lermontoff.  “What I want is some scientific apparatus.  I am a student of science.  I have nothing to do with politics, and have never been implicated in any plot.  Someone in authority has made a stupid mistake, and so I am here.  This mistake I am quite certain will be discovered and remedied.  I hold no malice, and will say nothing of the place, once I am free.  It is no business of mine.  But I do not wish to have the intervening time wasted.  I should like to buy some electrical machinery, and materials, for which I am willing to pay any price that is asked.”

“Do you understand electricity?” questioned the Governor, and for the first time his impassive face showed a glimmer of interest.

“Do I understand electricity?  Why, for over a year I have been chief electrician on a war-ship.”

“Perhaps then,” said the Governor, relapsing into Russian again, “you can tell me what is wrong with our dynamo here in the Rock.  After repeated requisition they sent machinery for lighting our offices and passages with electricity.  They apparently did not care to send an electrician to the Trogzmondoff, but forwarded instead some books of instruction.  I have been working at it for two years and a half, but I am still using oil lamps and candles.  We wired the place without difficulty.”  He held up the candle, and showed, depending from the ceiling, a chandelier of electric lamps which Lermontoff had not hitherto noticed, various brackets, and one or two stand lamps in a corner, with green silk-covered wire attached.

“May I see your dynamo?” asked Lermontoff.

The Governor, with one final warming of his hands, took up a candle, told the gaoler to remove the shade from the lamp and bring it, led the way along a passage, and then into a room where the prisoner, on first entering, had heard the roar of water.

“What’s this you have.  A turbine?  Does it give you any power?”

“Oh, it gives power enough,” said the Governor.

“Let’s see how you turn on the stream.”

The Governor set the turbine at work, and the dynamo began to hum, a sound which, to the educated ear of Lermontoff, told him several things.

“That’s all right, Governor, turn it off.  This is a somewhat old-fashioned dynamo, but it ought to give you all the light you can use.  You must be a natural born electrician, or you never could have got this machinery working as well as it does.”

The dull eyes of the Governor glowed for one brief moment, then resumed their customary expression of saddened tiredness.