The Promised Land

This last place of detention turned out to be a prison. "Quarantine" they called it, and there was a great deal of it--two weeks of it. Two weeks within high brick walls, several hundred of us herded in half a dozen compartments,--numbered compartments,--sleeping in rows, like sick people in a hospital; with roll-call morning and night, and short rations three times a day; with never a sign of the free world beyond our barred windows; with anxiety and longing and homesickness in our...
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This last place of detention turned out to be a prison. "Quarantine" they called it, and there was a great deal of it--two weeks of it. Two weeks within high brick walls, several hundred of us herded in half a dozen compartments,--numbered compartments,--sleeping in rows, like sick people in a hospital; with roll-call morning and night, and short rations three times a day; with never a sign of the free world beyond our barred windows; with anxiety and longing and homesickness in our hearts, and in our ears the unfamiliar voice of the invisible ocean, which drew and repelled us at the same time. The fortnight in quarantine was not an episode; it was an epoch, divisible into eras, periods, events.