Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/30

18 heavy frozen air, actually filled with the clouds of vapour that rose from the great mass of citizens, who had come to present their appeal to their Father, the Tsar.

The snow was decked with the red flowers of blood and spotted everywhere with the dark bodies of the killed and the wounded, many of the latter, as they tried to rise, being knocked down and trampled to death by the merciless fear of their fleeing companions.

The shooting lasted for a considerable time, ending only when the two streets which had poured their human streams upon the Square were empty and still. The Place before the Palace of the Tsar, this Tsar who began all his manifests with the words: "My beloved people," presented a sad and terrible appearance. Heaps of bodies lay everywhere, among them not only men but women and children as well, who had also come to petition their adored monarch for the happiness and honour of the country.

At the opposite end of the Place, General Trepoff made a speech to his faithful battalions, thanking them in the name of their ruler for the service they had performed, while the crowds of intelligentsia, students and workers, frightened, bewildered and each moment more excited, broke up into little groups and dispersed into the different parts of the city.

On the evening of this fateful day barricades were constructed in the streets of St. Petersburg, and during the whole night and through the two following days the scattered and irregular shooting of the revolutionists answered the loud volleys of the soldiers of the Guard. All factory hands went on strike; the street cars, the railways, the post and even some of the Government offices did not function.

But no one saw Gapon anywhere on the barricades.