Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/193

Rh of this unusual state of my mind. The answer was not far to seek. Instinctively my whole organism was feeling the uncertainty of each new moment. I had been thrown into this military prison, the most relentless and most stern of all, in a disgusting hole of a cell with frozen, damp walls and with a miniature barred window covered with planks. I realized clearly that at any moment they could take me out into the yard, stand me against the wall and put some nickel bullets into me; and I knew that General Ivanoff would have no scruples about paying the score in this way. Therefore, of what use were any thoughts of mine? So again I stopped thinking and fell to staring at the dirty rounded ceiling, feeling pangs of cold in my feet and up my back.

But a new enemy recalled me to my senses, coming in squads and attacking me with such energy that one might easily have supposed them to belong to the Black Hundreds of the Union of the Russian Nation and to have been sent against me by General Ivanoff with special orders that no quarter be given. I struggled desperately with them, marvelling all the time that my soldier guard did not call to me that this was also not allowed. He simply observed my defensive campaign and was silent.

I saw units made up of large and small members, coming along the wall in such formations that their strategy recalled to my mind that of a well-directed fleet. The big specimens bore down slowly and majestically like dreadnoughts with great waves rolled back at the water line, while on their flanks the little ones scurried like protecting lines of destroyers. This revolting enemy reached far ahead of its time and employed against me all of the known arts of modern warfare; for, catching me on both flanks, it enveloped me in a disgusting odour than which no modern poison gas could have been more