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Updated: May 7, 2025
"I was asleep when I felt a thump as if a cow had fallen on me, then I felt a sharp stab on the hip, two of them one after the other, then the weight was lifted suddenly off and I jumped up. As I put my feet on the ground I tumbled over Ivan here and who is it? Hold the lantern close to his face ah, Koshkin. What is it, Ivan, are you hurt?"
Then Koshkin, stripped to the waist, was brought forward and bound to a thick board having an iron leg, so that when laid down the board inclined to an angle of about thirty degrees. On this he was so strapped as to be perfectly immovable. Then a man approached with the dreaded whip and took his place on one side of the criminal. The governor then entered the square.
I have not, and that's all about it! Leave me in peace! Don't worry me! Be so good as to leave me alone!" And he walked out of the office. BETWEEN twelve and one at night a tall gentleman, wearing a top-hat and a coat with a hood, stops before the door of Marya Petrovna Koshkin, a midwife and an old maid.
Kobylin the bandit muttered and scowled whenever the starosta came near him, and there could be little doubt that had he met him outside the prison walls he would have shown him no mercy. Koshkin on the other hand appeared to cherish no enmity. "I have done wrong, Mikail," he said half an hour after he had had his flogging, "and I have been punished for it. It was not your fault; it was mine.
Godfrey did not hear a single word of pity for Koshkin, or of regret at his death. Indifference for others was one of the leading characteristics of the prisoners. Although living so long together they seldom appeared to form a friendship of any kind; each man lived for and thought only of his own lot.
Godfrey learnt that every effort had been made by the authorities to discover how Koshkin had obtained the knife, but without success. He must have bribed one of the guards to fetch it in for him, but there was no tracing which had been concerned in the matter. All the prisoners had been searched and their bags examined, but no other weapons had been discovered.
He is in for life, but he is a great deal worse than I am, is he not? "Then there is that little Koshkin, the man who is always walking about smiling to himself.
Then he signalled to the executioner, who brought down his lash with great force upon the bare back of the prisoner. A terrible cry broke from Koshkin. Two more blows were given, and then the executioner moved to the other side and delivered another three blows. In this way the lashes crossed each other at an angle. Godfrey could look no more, but crawled back on to his own bed.
"Yes, he is a thorough-paced villain; you have done very well, young man, and I shall not forget it." Five days later there was a stir in front of the hospital, and Mikail, whose bed was by the side of the window, raised himself on his elbow and looked out. "It is a punishment parade," he said; "I expect they are going to flog Koshkin with the plete.
Years ago they used the plete at all the prisons, now they only use it at three prisons, where the worst criminals are sent, and this is one of them." A week later they were both discharged from the hospital and returned to the ward. The first thing they heard on entering it was that Koshkin had died the night before. Godfrey went back to his work in the office.
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