Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/214

170 elected a committee of the fortress garrison to protest. The prisoners, they said, were getting the same food as the guards, when there wasn’t even enough to keep a man from being hungry. “Why should the counter-revolutionists be treated so well?”

“We are revolutionists, comrades, not bandits,” answered the commandant. He turned to us. We explained that rumours were going about that the yunkers were being tortured, and the lives of the Ministers threatened. Could we perhaps see the prisoners, so as to be able to prove to the world?”

“No,” said the young soldier, irritably. “I am not going to disturb the prisoners again. I have just been compelled to wake them up—they were sure we were going to massacre them… Most of the yunkers have been released anyway, and the rest will go out to-morrow.” He turned abruptly away.

“Could we talk to the Duma commission, then?”

The Commandant, who was pouring himself a glass of tea, nodded. “They are still out in the hall,” he said carelessly.

Indeed they stood there just outside the door, in the feeble light of an oil lamp, grouped around the Mayor and talking excitedly.

“Mr. Mayor,” I said, “we are American correspondents. Will you please tell us officially the result of your investigations?”

He turned to us his face of venerable dignity.

“There is no truth in the reports,” he said slowly. “Except for the incidents which occurred as the Ministers were being brought here, they have been treated with every consideration. As for the yunkers, not one has received the slightest injury…”

Up the Nevsky, in the empty after-midnight gloom, an interminable column of soldiers shuffled in silence—to battle with Kerensky. In dim back streets automobiles without lights