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Rh big sailor flung in his face. "You want to save the rascals. But you can't. We'll kill them."

"The first man who lays his hands on a prisoner—I will kill him on the spot!" Antonov spoke slowly, with emphasis on each word. "You understand! I will shoot him dead!"

"Shoot us?" queried the affronted sailors.

"Shoot us! Shoot us!" bellowed the whole indignant mob.

For it was just that—a mob, with all the vehement passions of the mob. A mob with every primitive instinct inflamed and ascendant: cruel, brutal, lusting for blood. In it flamed the savagery of the wolf, the ferocity of the tiger. A huge beast drawn out of the jungles of the city, stirred up by these White hunters, wounded, and bleeding from its wounds, all day exasperated and tormented, at last, in a paroxysm of joy and rage it was about to pounce upon its tormentors and tear them to pieces. At this moment this little man stepped between it and its prey! To me the most emotional thing in the whole revolution is this little man standing in that stairway, so unemotionally looking that mob in the eye; rather, in its thousand glaring eyes. There was pallor in his face, but no tremor in his limbs. And no quaver in his voice, as he said again slowly and solemnly, "The first man who tries to kill a Yunker, I will kill him."

The sheer audacity, the impudence of it took their breath away.