ited Godfrey to join them, but his
mind was so much occupied with his own plans that he felt quite unable
to give the requisite attention to the game.

He soon learnt the methods by which order and discipline were maintained
in the prisons. For small offences the punishment was a decrease in the
rations, the prohibition of smoking--the prisoners' one enjoyment--and
confinement to the room. The last part of the sentence was that which
the prisoners most disliked. So far from work being hardship, the break
which it afforded to the monotony of their life rendered the privation
of it the severest of punishments, and Godfrey learned that there was
the greatest difficulty in getting men to accept the position of
starosta, in spite of the privileges and power the position gave,
because he did not go out to work. For more serious offences men were
punished by a flogging, more or less severe, with birch rods. For this,
however, they seemed to care very little, although sometimes
incapacitated for doing work for some days, from the effects of the
beating.

Lastly, for altogether exceptional crimes, or for open outbreaks of
insubordination, there was the _plete_--flogging with a whip of twisted
hide, fastened to a handle ten inches long and an inch thick. The lash
is at first the same thickness as the handle, tapering for twelve
inches, and then divided into three smaller lashes, each twenty-five
inches long and about the thickness of the little finger. This terrible
weapon is in use only at three of the Siberian prisons, of which Kara is
one. From twenty to twenty-five lashes are given, and the punishment is
considered equivalent to a sentence to death, as in many cases the
culprit survives the punishment but a short time. The prisoners were
agreed that at Kara the punishment of the _plete_ was extremely rare,
only being given for the murder of a convict or official by one of the
convicts. The quarrels among the prisoners, although frequent, and
attended by great shouting and gesticulation, very rarely came to blows,
the Russians having no idea of using their fists, and the contests, when
it came to that, being little more than a tussle, with hair pulling and
random blows. Had the prisoners had knives or other weapons ready to
hand, the results would have been very different.

Godfrey had not smoked until he arrived at Kara; but he found that in
the dense atmosphere of the prison room it was almost necessary, and
therefore too