A yellow-haired young woman, not more than twenty, emerged from a house close by where I stood, and ran past me to the barricade. As she passed I saw that she carried something in her hand. It looked like a small cylinder of metal.
Shouting to a man who was firing through a loophole near the top of the barricade, she handed it up to him. Taking it carefully, he scrambled up higher, waited for a few moments, and then raising himself, he hurled it far into the air, into the midst of an advancing troop of Cossacks.
There was a red flash, a terrific explosion which shook the whole town, wrecking the houses in the immediate vicinity, and blowing to atoms dozens of the Czar’s soldiers.
A wild shout of victory went up from the revolutionists when they saw the havoc caused by the awful bomb. The yellow-haired girl returned again, and brought another, which, after some ten minutes or so, was similarly hurled against the troops, with equally disastrous effect.
The roadway was strewn with the bodies of those Cossacks which General Kinski, the governor of the town, had telegraphed for, and whom Krasiloff had ordered to give no quarter to the revolutionists. In Western Russia the name of Krasiloff was synonymous with all that was cruel and brutal. It was he who ordered the flogging of the five young women at Minsk, those poor unfortunate creatures who were knouted by Cossacks, who laid their backs bare to the bone. As everyone in Russia knows, two of them, both members of good families, died within a few hours, and yet no reprimand did he receive from Petersburg. By the Czar, and at the Ministry of the Interior, he was known to be a hard man, and for that reason certain towns where the revolutionary spirit was strongest had been given into his hands.
At Kiev he had executed without trial dozens of men and women arrested for revolutionary acts. A common grave was dug in the prison-yard, and the victims, four at a time, were led forward to the edge of the pit and shot, each batch being compelled to witness the execution of the four prisoners preceding them. With a refinement of cruelty that was only equalled by the Inquisition, he had wrung confessions from women and afterwards had them shot and buried. At Petersburg they knew these things, but he had actually been commended for his loyalty to the Czar!
And now that he had been hurriedly moved to Ostrog the people knew that his order to the Cossacks was to massacre the people, and more especially the Jewish portion of the population, without mercy.
Where was Bindo? I wondered.
“Krasiloff is here!” said a man whose face was smeared with blood, as he stood by me. “He intends that we shall all die, but we will fight for it. The Revolution has only just commenced. Soon the peasants will rise, and we will sweep the country clean of the vermin the Czar has placed upon us. To-day Kinski, the Governor, has been fired at twice, but unsuccessfully. He wants a bomb, and he shall have it,” he added meaningly. “Olga—the girl yonder with the yellow hair—has one for him!” and he laughed grimly.
I recognised my own deadly peril. I stood revolver in hand, though I had not fired a shot, for I was no revolutionist. I was only awaiting the inevitable breaking down of the barricade—and the awful catastrophe that must befall the town when those Cossacks, drunk with the lust for blood, swept into the streets.
Around me, men and women were shouting themselves hoarse, while the red emblem of terror still waved lazily from the top of the barricade. The men manning the improvised defence kept up a withering fire upon the troops, who, in the open road, were afforded no cover. Time after time the place shook as those terrible bombs exploded with awful result, for the yellow-haired girl seemed to keep up a continuous supply of them. They were only seven or eight inches long, but hurled into a company of soldiers their effect was deadly.
For half an hour longer it seemed as though the defence of the town would be effectual, yet of a sudden the redoubled shouts of those about me told me the truth.
The Cossacks had been reinforced, and were about to rush the barricade.
I managed to peer forth, and there, sure enough, the whole roadway was filled with soldiers.
Yells, curses, heavy firing, men falling back from the barricade to die around me, and the disappearance of the red flag, showed that the Cossacks were at last scaling the great pile of miscellaneous objects that blocked the street. A dozen of the Czar’s soldiers appeared silhouetted against the sky as they scrambled across the top of the barricade, but next second a dozen corpses fell to earth, riddled by the bullets of the men standing below in readiness.
In a moment, however, other men appeared in their places, and still more and more. Women threw up their hands in despair and fled for their lives while men—calmly prepared to die in the Cause—shouted again and again, “Down with Krasiloff and the Czar! Long live the Revolution! Victory for the People’s Will!”
I stood undecided. I was facing death. Those Cossacks with orders to massacre would give no quarter, and would not discriminate. Krasiloff was waiting for his dastardly order to be carried out. The Czar had given him instructions to crush the Revolution by whatever means he thought proper.
Those moments of suspense seemed hours. Suddenly there was another flash, a stunning report, the air was filled with débris, and a great breach opened in the barricade. The Cossacks had used explosives to clear away the obstruction. Next instant they were upon us.
I flew—flew for my life. Whither my legs carried me I know not. Women’s despairing shrieks rent the air on every hand. The massacre had commenced. I remember I dashed into a long, narrow street that seemed half deserted, then turned corner after corner, but behind me, ever increasing, rose the cries of the doomed populace. The Cossacks were following the people into their houses and killing men, women, and even children.
Suddenly, as I turned into a side street, I saw that it led into a large open thoroughfare—the main road through the town, I expect. And there, straight before me, I saw that an awful scene was being enacted.
I turned to run back, but at that instant a woman’s long, despairing cry reached me, causing me to glance within a doorway, where stood a big brutal Cossack, who had pursued and captured a pretty, dark-haired, well-dressed girl.
“Save me!” she shrieked as I passed. “Oh, save me, sir!” she gasped, white, terrified, and breathless with struggling. “He will kill me!”
The burly soldier had his bearded face close down to hers, his arms clasped around her, and had evidently forced her from the street into the entry.
For a second I hesitated.
“Oh, sir, save me! Save me, and God will reward you!” she implored, her big dark eyes turned to mine in final appeal.
The fellow at that moment raised his fist and struck her a brutal blow upon the mouth that caused the blood to flow, saying with a savage growl—
“Be quiet, will you?”
“Let that woman go!” I commanded in the best Russian I could muster.
In an instant, with a glare in his fiery eyes, for the blood-lust was within him, he turned upon me and sneeringly asked who I was to give him orders, while the poor girl reeled, half stunned by his blow.
“Let her go, I say!” I shouted, advancing quickly towards him.
But in a moment he had drawn his big army revolver, and ere I became aware of his dastardly intention, he raised it a few inches from her face.
Quick as thought I raised my own weapon, which I had held behind me, and being accredited a fairly good shot, I fired, in an endeavour to save the poor girl.
Fortunately my bullet struck, for he stepped back, his revolver dropped from his fingers upon the stones, and stumbling forward he fell dead at her feet without a word. My shot had, I saw, hit him in the temple, and death had probably been instantaneous.
With a cry of joy at her sudden release, the girl rushed across to me, and raising my left hand to her lips, kissed it, at the same time thanking me.
Then, for the first time, I reco
gnised how uncommonly pretty she was. Not more than eighteen, she was slim and petite, with a narrow waist and graceful figure—quite unlike in refinement and in dress to the other women I had seen in Ostrog. Her dark hair had come unbound in her desperate struggle with the Cossack and hung about her shoulders, her bodice was torn and revealed a bare white neck, and her chest heaved and fell as in breathless, disjointed sentences she thanked me again and again.
There was not a second to lose, however. She was, I recognised, a Jewess, and Krasiloff’s orders were to spare them not.
From the main street beyond rose the shouts and screams, the firing and wild triumphant yells, as the terrible massacre progressed.
“Come with me!” she cried breathlessly. “Along here. I know of a place of safety.”
And she led the way, running swiftly, for about two hundred yards, and then turning into a narrow, dirty courtyard, passed through an evil, forbidding-looking house, where all was silent as the grave.
With a key, she quickly opened the door of a poor, ill-furnished room, which she closed behind her, but did not lock. Then, opening a door on the opposite side, which had been papered over so as to escape observation, I saw there was a flight of damp stone stairs leading down to a cellar or some subterranean regions beneath the house.
“Down here!” she said, taking a candle, lighting it and handing it to me. “Go—I will follow.”
I descended cautiously into the cold, dank place, discovering it to be a kind of unlighted cellar hewn out of the rock. A table, a chair, a lamp, and some provisions showed that preparation had been made for concealment there, but ere I had entirely explored the place my pretty fellow-fugitive rejoined me.
“This, I hope, is a place of safety,” she said. “They will not find us here. This is where Gustave lived before his flight.”
“Gustave?” I repeated, looking her straight in the face.
She dropped her eyes and blushed. Her silence told its own tale. The previous occupant of that rock chamber was her lover.
Her name was Luba—Luba Lazareff, she told me. But of herself she would tell me nothing further. Her reticence was curious, yet before long I recognised the reason of her refusal.
Candle in hand, I was examining the deepest recesses of the dark cavernous place, while she lit the lamp, when, to my surprise, I discovered at the farther end a workman’s bench upon which were various pieces of turned metal, pieces of tube of various sizes, and little phials of glass like those used for the tiny tabloids for subcutaneous injections.
I took one up to examine it, but at that instant she noticed me and screamed in terror.
“Ah! sir, for Heaven’s sake, put that down—very carefully. Touch nothing there, or we may both be blown to pieces! See!” she added in a low, intense voice of confession, as she dashed forward, “there are finished bombs there! Gustave could not carry them all away, so he left those with me.”
“Then Gustave made these—eh?”
“Yes. And see, he gave me this!” and she drew from her breast a small shining cylinder of brass, a beautifully-finished little object about four inches long. “He gave this to me to use—if necessary!” the girl added, a meaning flash in her dark eyes.
For a moment I was silent.
“Then you would have used it upon that Cossack?” I said slowly.
“That was my intention.”
“And kill yourself as well as your assailant?”
“I have promised him,” was her simple answer.
“And this Gustave? You love him? Tell me all about him. Remember, I am your friend, and will help you if I can.”
She hesitated, and I was compelled to urge her again and again ere she would speak.
“Well, he is French—from Paris,” she said at last, as we still stood before the bomb-maker’s bench. “He is a chemist, and being an Anarchist, came to us, and joined us in the Revolution. The petards thrown over the barricades to-day were of his make, but he had to fly. He left yesterday.”
“For Paris?”
“Ah! how can I tell? The Cossacks may have caught and killed him. He may be dead,” she added hoarsely.
“Which direction has he taken?”
“He was compelled to leave hurriedly at midnight. He came, kissed me, and gave me this,” she said, still holding the shining little bomb in her small white hand. “He said he intended, if possible, to get over the hills to the frontier at Satanow.”
I saw that she was deeply in love with the fugitive, whoever he might be.
Outside, the awful massacre was in progress we knew, but no sound of it reached us down in that rock-hewn tomb.
The yellow lamp-light fell upon her sweet, dimpled face, but when she turned her splendid eyes to mine I saw that in them was a look of anxiety and terror inexpressible.
I inquired of her father and mother, for she was of a superior class, as I had, from the first moment, detected. She spoke French extremely well, and we had dropped into that language as being easier for me than Russian.
“What can it matter to you, sir, a stranger?” she sighed.
“But I am interested in you, mademoiselle,” I answered. “Had I not been, I should not have fired that shot.”
“Ah yes!” she cried quickly. “I am an ingrate! You saved my life;” and again she seized both my hands and kissed them.
“Hark!” I cried, startled. “What’s that?” for I distinctly heard a sound of cracking wood.
The next moment men’s gruff voices reached us from above.
“The Cossacks!” she screamed. “They have found us—they have found us!” and the light died out of her beautiful countenance.
In her trembling hand she held the terrible little engine of destruction.
With a quick movement I gripped her wrist, urging her to refrain until all hope was abandoned, and together we stood facing the soldiers as they descended the stairs to where we were. They were, it seems, searching every house.
“Ah!” they cried, “a good hiding-place this! But the wall was hollow, and revealed the door.”
“Well, my pretty!” exclaimed a big leering Cossack, chucking the trembling girl beneath the chin.
“Hold!” I commanded the half-dozen men who now stood before us, their swords red with the life-blood of the Revolution. But before I could utter further word the poor girl was wrenched from my grasp, and the Cossack was smothering her face with his hot, nauseous kisses.
“Hold, I tell you!” I shouted. “Release her, or it is at your own peril!”
“Hulloa!” they laughed. “Who are you?” and one of the men raised his sword to strike me, whilst another held him back, exclaiming, “Let us hear what he has to say.”
“Then, listen!” I said, drawing from my pocket-book a folded paper.“Read this, and look well at the signature. This girl is under my protection;” and I handed the document to the man who held little Luba in his arms. It was only my Foreign Office passport, but I knew they could not read English and that it was a formidable screed, with its coat-of-arms and visa.
The men, astounded at my announcement, read what they took to be some all-powerful ukase beneath the lamp-light, and took counsel among themselves.
“And who, pray, is this Jewess?” inquired one.
“My affianced wife,” was my quick reply. “And I command you at once to take us under safe escort to General Krasiloff—quickly, without delay. We took refuge in this place from the Revolution, in which we have taken no part.”
I saw, however, with sinking heart, that one of the men was examining the bomb-maker’s bench, and had recognised the character of what remained there.
He looked at us, smiled grimly, and whispered smoothly to one of his companions.
Again, in an authoritative tone, I demanded to be taken to Krasiloff; and present
ly, after being marched as prisoners across the town, past scenes so horrible that they are still vividly before my eyes, we were taken into the chief police-office, where the hated official, a fat, red-faced man in a general’s uniform—the man without pity or remorse, the murderer of women and children—was sitting at a table. He greeted me with a grunt.
“General,” I said, addressing him, “I have to present to you this order of my sovereign, King Edward, and to demand safe conduct. Your soldiers found me and my—”
I hesitated.
“Your pretty Jewess—eh?” and a smile of sarcasm spread over his fat face. “Well, go on;” and he took the paper I handed him, knitting his brows again as his eyes fell upon the Imperial arms and the signature.
“We were found in a cellar where we had hidden from the revolt,” I said.
“The place has been used for the manufacture of bombs,” declared one of the Cossacks.
The General looked my pretty companion straight in the face.
“What is your name, girl?” he demanded roughly.
“Luba Lazereff.”
“Native of where?”
“Of Petersburg.”
“What are you doing in Ostrog?”
“She is with me,” I interposed. “I demand protection for her.”
“I am addressing the prisoner, sir,” was his cold remark.
“You refuse to obey the request of the King of England? Good! Then I shall report you to the Minister,” I exclaimed, piqued at his insolence.
“Speak, girl!” he roared, his black eyes fixed fiercely upon her. “Why are you in Ostrog? You are no provincial—you know.”
“She is my affianced wife,” I said, “and in face of that document she need make no reply to any of your questions. Read what His Majesty commands.”
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 34