Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/110

, narrow gully, where prisoners were taken to be shot, from which no sound could penetrate to the outer world, sent thrills of cold horror down our backs. The ingenious methods of torture made us physically sick. Altogether it was a gruesome experience, unrelieved of its sad associations by the humorous writings on the wall of British prisoners temporarily incarcerated on suspicion of promoting counter-revolutionary activity.

Off to Moscow! The city of golden domes and spires! So different from Peter the Great's city of the marshes, new and splendid though that is, with the broad Neva to add to its beauty.

The same comfortable train took us there in thirteen hours. Usually it takes longer; but orders had come through that we must be in Moscow by noon the day following, and we were there to a minute. The crowds which met us in the railway station and lined the approaches to the station beggar description, both for their size and the warmth of their reception. Here was an open-hearted, generous lot of people, to whom we felt drawn from the very first minute. It did not take long to sense a difference between these folk and those we had just left. There was less of strain and torment here, more of human jolliness and kindliness; less of the burning fever of revolution, more of its constructive hope.