Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/181

Rh from another hundred throats. The shout raised in the courtyard was caught up in the street and the crowd surged forward crying, "The officers, Antonov? Where are the officers and the Yunkers?"

"Done for," announced Antonov. "Their arms are down."

Like the bursting of a dam came the roar from a thousand throats. Yells of triumph and howls of rage proclaiming "Death to the officers! Death to the Yunkers!"

Good reason for the Whites to tremble! At the mercy of those to whom they had forfeited all claims for mercy. Not by fighting, but by fighting foully they had roused this volcano of wrath. In the eyes of these soldiers and workmen the Whites were murderers of the Red comrades, assassinators of the Revolution, miscreants to be exterminated like vermin. Fear only had kept the Reds from plunging up the stairway. Now all cause for caution was gone. The infuriated men stormed forward filling the night with their cries, "Wipe out the butchers! Kill the White Devils! Kill every one of them!"

A torch here and there in the blackness lit up the bearded faces of peasants, soldier-faces, the faces of city artisans grimed and thin, and in the front rank the open, alert countenances of the big sailors from the Baltic fleet. On all of them, in flashing eyes, and clenched jaws vengeance was written, the terrible vengeance of the long-suffering. Pressed from the rear, the mass lunged forward against the stairway