Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/187

Rh other figure that did not run was that of a schoolboy, ten years old.

On this day General Kazbek accomplished much toward the furtherance of his career. In his report to St. Petersburg he telegraphed:

"The faithful soldiers of Your Majesty under my command gallantly dispersed an immense crowd of hostile agitators."

But life works out its own nemesis for criminal baseness—this is the law of inscrutable, ever-existing Supreme Justice.

The crowd dispersed itself in panic throughout the whole town. The news that the soldiers had fired upon the unarmed and peacefully disposed procession flew from mouth to mouth with lightning speed, reaching the forts on Russian Island and the ships in the Golden Horn. Among the soldiers there were many revolutionary minded, while the sailors were practically all of this mould. The moment they had the news, they snatched up their arms and ran over the ice to the town, while the soldiers hoisted the red banner of revolution over one of the forts on the Island. Only one regiment, which had lately arrived from Russia, remained passive and obedient to the orders of the Staff.

When General Kazbek learned of this state of affairs, he ordered this regiment to turn their pieces on the town and on the ships. The guns from the batteries controlled by the mutinied soldiers and the naval guns on the ships answered the very first shots and brought bursting shells into parts of the town and into the forts which were hidden on the hills above it. Fires broke out in various places, an especially fierce one among the shops in the Chinese quarter. Soon the flames began to surge through