I made several efforts, but was too weak to succeed, and could only sprawl and squirm in my helplessness.

So they rolled me over on my back, where I stared up into Warden Atherton’s face.

“Standing,” he said slowly, “I am sick and tired of your stubbornness. My patience is exhausted. Doctor Jackson says you are in condition to stand ten days in the jacket. But I am going to give you your last chance now. Tell me about the dynamite. The moment the dynamite is in my hands I’ll take you out of here. You will bathe and shave and get clean clothes. Then I’ll put you trusty in the library. I think you are the only person in San Quentin who knows where the dynamite is. And if you don’t tell me—”

He paused and shrugged his shoulders significantly.

“Well, if you don’t, you will put this jacket on. For ten days.”

The prospect was terrifying. I was very weak. Warden knew that it meant death in the jacket. And then I remembered Morrell’s trick. Now was the time to practise it. I smiled.

“These college guys are crazy,” Captain Jamie snorted.

“Warden,” I said quietly. “You can cinch me as tight as you please, but if I smile ten days from now will you give some tobacco to Morrell and Oppenheimer?”

“I guess you will die sooner, Standing.”

“That’s your opinion,” I said. “But since you are so sure of it, why don’t you accept my proposition?”

“All right, Standing,” snarled Warden. “Roll him over, boys, and cinch him till you hear his ribs crack. Hutchins, show him you know how to do it.”

And they rolled me over and laced me as I had never been laced before. The head trusty certainly demonstrated his ability. You see, Hutchins was a scoundrel. But I did not believe that I was going to die. I knew—I say I knew—that I was not going to die.

“That’s pretty tight,” Captain Jamie urged reluctantly.

“I tell you,” said Doctor Jackson, “nothing can hurt him. He ought to have been dead long ago.”

Warden Atherton, after a hard struggle, managed to insert his forefinger between the lacing and my back.

“Hutchins,” he said. “You know your job. Now roll him over and let’s look at him.”

They rolled me over on my back. I stared up at them. But I was well trained. I had behind me the thousands of hours in the jacket, and, plus that, I had faith in what Morrell had told me.

“Now, laugh, damn you, laugh,” said the Warden to me.

I was able to smile up into the Warden’s face.

The door clanged. I managed to writhe myself across the floor until the edge of the sole of my right shoe touched the door. I could at least rap knuckle talk to Morrell.

But though I managed to call Morrell and tell him I intended trying the experiment, he was prevented by the guards from replying.

I remember my serenity of mind. The customary pain of the jacket was in my body, but my mind was so passive that I was no more aware of the pain than was I aware of the floor beneath me or the walls around me. Never was a man in better mental and spiritual condition for such an experiment. Of course, this was largely due to my extreme weakness. But there was more to it. I had neither doubts nor fears.

I began my concentration of will. My body was numbing and prickling through the loss of circulation. I directed my will to the little toe of my right foot, and I willed that toe to cease to be alive in my consciousness. I willed that toe to die. There was the hard struggle. Morrell had warned me that it would be so. But I knew that that toe would die, and I knew when it was dead. Joint by joint it had died under the compulsion of my will.

The rest was easy, but slow. Joint by joint, toe by toe, all the toes of both my feet ceased to be. And joint by joint, the process went on. My flesh below the ankles had ceased. All below my knees had ceased.

I knew that I was making my body die. I was devoted to that sole task. At the end of an hour my body was dead to the hips.

When I reached the level of my heart, the first blurring and dizzying of my consciousness occurred. I had shifted my concentration to my fingers. My brain cleared again, and the death of my arms to the shoulders was most rapidly accomplished.

At this stage my body was all dead, save my head [32] and a little patch of my chest. My heart was beating steadily but feebly.

At this point it seemed as if a prodigious enlargement of my brain was taking place within the skull itself that did not enlarge. Most perplexing was the seeming enlargement of brain. It seemed to me that the periphery of my brain was already outside my skull and still expanding. Time and space underwent an enormous extension. Thus, without opening my eyes to verify, I knew that the walls of my narrow cell had receded until it was like a vast audience-chamber [33] . And while I contemplated the matter, I knew that they continued to recede. Of course, this was pure fantastic whim, and I knew it.