At ten o’clock, the next morning, the air was still filled with flying, female figures. Though my nature is hard, it filled me with frenzy and terrible anguish to see those flying forms slowly dying of starvation for lack of food and water. At five o’clock of the same day, the flying forms still cluttered the last rays of the sun. The cordon of police stood by and cast menacing looks in my direction. In desperation, I plunged into the hotel, seized my trusty blunderbuss, which had never failed me in my vicissitudes. Would I see those guests, who had entrusted themselves in my keeping, slowly starve?
I can see them yet, with their anguished faces and tongues hanging out, crying for a drop of water to quench their terrible thirst. My decision was made ! Come what would, I must act, and with a sweep of my blunderbuss, finger on trigger I pulled. Twenty-six female forms lay on the pavement in death-like silence.
A crushing blow on my head, semi-consciousness and the cries of the multitudes, and I felt myself being dragged through the streets to a loathesome cell. Weeks later, I was tried and sent to San Quinton prison to serve a fifteen
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