Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/109

 CHAPTER IX

Off to Moscow

FF to Moscow at last, the city of our dreams! I have not told one half of our adventures in Petrograd. It is not possible to do so. The tour of the great Putiloff Works was of enormous interest, and may be referred to in a later part of the narrative. Our visit to the gloomy fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul at midnight had a mournful fascination for those who have steeped themselves in the lore of the martyrs of the Revolution. The old keeper of the cells is still there, impassive and unresponsive as a man of such responsibilities might well be, as quietly content to serve the new order as the old, human enough to be pleased that no one occupied his quarters at the time of our visit. We saw the large, damp, gloomy cells, twice as big as the cells of an English prison, whose sole claim to comfort lay in the provision in each cell of running water and a sanitary convenience. These things were not, of course, in the punishment cells, which were entirely dark and partly under water. The 105