Isle of The Living Dead

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 152, 17 September 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

Isle of The Living Dead

■ HEN the ship has made fast, the men pour out .of the barred cages in her hold, like grey rats, in the thick woollen uniforms of the French prisons. They pour down two gangways and form fours <sn the wharf . . . In the silence they wait, blinking in the strong tropic sun, with rivulets of perspiration trickling down their faces . . . Then ‘March!’” Thus, land the ill-starred beings, who are brought to St. Laurent for the convict settlement in French Guiana. Perhaps, one or two of them may be destined for Devil’s Island, the most notorious place of exile in the world. Here Dreyfus spent five years of his solitary banishment on a false charge of treason.

France long ago did what justice it could to this victim of a jealous conspiracy, but she still retains Devil’s Island as her Island of Treason, and to-day 19 men, convicted of treachery to the nation, watch the ocean foam dash and break on the rocks of their island prison. Second to lie du Diable in interest is its neighbour, St. Joseph, the island of solitary confinement and silence, the place of punishment to which the prisons of Guiana send their “incorrigibles.” Men speak of it with a shudder.

“Dreyfus House” on Devil’s Island is a house of one room, occupied by two political prisoners; and at the window where sat poor Dreyfus, writing those passionate, heart-broken letters to his wife—his “good darling,” as he called her—there is a former hairdresser, carving powder boxes out of coco-nut shells.

The one street of Devil’s Island—a row of huts beneath a narrow avenue of palms—is called Traitor’s Lane; the street of lost hopes, it is, from which there is no escape. It is not enough that the guns of Royale, the largest of the two adjacent islands, cover the lie du Diable, and that a swift current, in which cruise ferocious sharks, swirl around it. In addition, armed keepers patrol the island; and at night, as a further precaution, the men are locked in. Even the visits of the priest are rare, and no woman’s foot has trodden the island. The deadly monotony tends to madness. The days drag by with only the distribution of the day’s rations to break their sameness. There is no amusement to give relief; sentenced for life to Devil’s Island, their Government asks only their perpetual exile and is not interested in how they spend their time. They carve turtleshell and coco-nut-shell for occupation. They are allowed to write letters (which are strictly censored), but these letters have only one theme—the desire to get away from this hell of monotony.

There is no movement, no variety—unless it may be counted variety that occasionally a prisoner dies, or a new one arrives, or that one keeper may be replaced by another. Otherwise the days which make up the months and then in turn the years remain the same. Time is not killed on Devil’s Island; it dies—a slow death. as though it were afflicted with a creeping paralysis.

Sew on a button . . . carve a flower on the handle of a shell paper-knife . . remember . . . scheme . . . plan . . And then begin all over again to do the same thing . , ,