Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/191

Rh from the guns. But the guns were there to guard them.

Five sailors shouldering rifles took their stand at the foot of the steps. Antonov seized the hand of an officer and placed it in the hand of a sailor.

"Number one," he said. "A helpless, disarmed prisoner. His life is in your hands. Guard it for the honor of the Revolution." The squad encircled the prisoner and marched thru the archway.

With a like formula the next prisoner was handed over, and the next, and the next; each one entrusted to a detachment of four or five. "The end of the rubbish," muttered an old peasant as the last officer was delivered to his escort, and the procession filed out into the Morskaya.

Near the Winter Palace infuriated mobs fell upon the Yunkers and tore them from the hands of their convoys. But the revolutionary sailors, charging the mobs, rescued the prisoners and brought them safely to the prison Fortress of Peter and Paul.

The Revolution was not everywhere powerful enough to check the savage passions of the mobs. Not always was it on time to allay the primitive blood-lusts. Unoffending citizens were assaulted by hooligans. In out-of-the-way places half-savages, calling themselves Red Guards, committed heinous crimes. At the front General Dukhonin was dragged from his carriage and torn to pieces despite the protesting commissars. Even in Petrograd some