Among everyone who’d arrived there was the salient question: How can I get something to eat? This would have been simple to accomplish had we our own money, because in each penal laborers’ barracks there's a maidan-shop, where bread, rolls, milk, fish, sugar, and tobacco can be gotten. But prisoners’ monies had been sequestered along the way, so my circle of comrades didn't have a kopek.

I went out to the yard. Rather oddly, I felt relatively free. I was used to seeing behind or in front of me a soldier or gendarme dictating my direction; but now I could go where I wanted! Right, left, or call at another barracks. I went to pay a call. Inside, there was growling and uproar, laughter and cursing, and tobacco smoke hanging over everything like a fog. People were seeking out their fellow countrymen. Many had already formed themselves into little cliques.

Having confirmed we weren't going to be given a crust of bread until morning, I returned to my place and began readying myself to sleep, when suddenly I clearly heard my surname called above the din. My neighbors pointed me out. A young man in a pea-jacket, with a bit of pretense toward dandyism, asked me to go with him to the warden’s. He was a prisoner-clerk. Besides me, he also invited an officer, a Transcaucasian hero of the Turkish war who’d been exiled here for insulting his commander.

In our long gray cassocks with yellow aces on the backs, our peak-less gray caps, our yellow chirki worn unpleasantly over our gray puttees, in short jackets and coarse trousers with slits for shackles, we dragged ourselves to the warden's room, stopping in the entranceway in anticipation of what would come.

“Gentlemen, please, come in!” the warden called to us from his dining room. “Please, dine with me; only, forgive me that I cannot serve you meat. You’ve probably been eating salted beef at sea, but we get meat only if a worthless steer or an old cow gets killed. Please, forgive me!”

I glanced at the long table. It was laden with a variety of dishes. A fish was visible, and I remember some red salmon meat or smoked salmon.