Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/33

Rh with his books limped into a side street, crying with pain. Only a few steps in front of me a little girl with a basket swayed and fell on her back. Rolls scattered out of her basket. To this day I remember seeing one of them roll into a little pool of blood on the pavement and stick there.

When I regained conscious control of myself, which had been momentarily lost through the shock of the volleys and the cries of the wounded, I found myself alone on the sidewalk. Though the shooting had temporarily ceased, I flattened myself against the nearest house and began my retreat. Soon I had rounded the corner and was for the moment safe. From the hiding-place which I had found and in which I waited immediate developments, I heard new volleys that were being fired from the tower of the City Hall and in the neighbourhood of the Anichkoff Palace. A little later the Nevsky Prospect looked deserted and dead. Then the police appeared, quickly removed the bodies of the slain and covered the pools of blood with yellow sand, while patrols took up their stations at the corners of the streets. From time to time shots were heard and the shrieking bullets wailed their dirge off in the direction of the monument of Alexander III. In this drastic manner the authorities checked all traffic on the great artery of the capital and with such lessons taught the public not to congregate.

Thirteen years later, in this same capital, with its name changed to Petrograd, I was again witness during the Revolutionary terror in 1917 and 1918 to similar scenes. In the same manner soldiers suddenly appeared and shot down the people, but with only this difference, that during the rule of the Tsar such a thing occurred only once, while during Bolshevik days it occurred so frequently