It was only temporarily, no doubt, but it behoved us to have knowledge of what might be in the wind.
It was winter, and the journey to the German capital was cold and cheerless. Yet I had not been there six hours before I had discovered that Hartmann had left for a place called Ostrog, in Eastern Poland.
Therefore I lost no time in setting forth for that rather obscure place.
Yes, nowadays my life was a strange one, full of romance and constant change, of excitement--and sometimes of insecurity.
For what reason had the great Hartmann been sent so far afield?
On leaving the railway, I travelled for two days in a sleigh over those endless snow-covered roads and dark forests, until my horses, with their jingling bells, pulled up before a small inn on the outskirts of the dismal-looking town of Ostrog. The place, with its roofs covered with freshly-fallen snow, lay upon the slight slope of a low hill, beneath which wound the Wilija Goryn, now frozen so hard that the bridge was hardly ever used. It was January, and that month in Poland is always a cold one.
I had crossed the frontier at the little village of Kolodno, and thence driven along the valleys into Volynien, a long, weary, dispiriting drive, on and on until those bells maddened me by their monotonous rhythm. Cramped and cold I was, notwithstanding the big fur coat I wore, the fur cap with flaps, fur gloves, and fur rug. The country inns in which I had spent the past two nights had been filthy places where the stoves had been surrounded by evil-smelling peasantry, where the food was uneatable and where a wooden bench had served me as a bed.
At each stage where we changed horses the post-house keeper had held up his hands when he knew my destination was Ostrog. "The Red Rooster" was crowing there, they said significantly.
It was true. Russia was under the Terror again, and in no place in the whole empire were the revolutionists so determined as in the town whither I was bound. I saw at once the reason why Hartmann was there--to secretly stir up strife, for it is to the advantage of Germany that Russia should be in a state of unrest. To observe the German methods was certainly interesting.
Ostrog at last! As I stood up and descended unsteadily from my sleigh my eyes fell upon something upon the snow near the door of the inn. There was blood. It told its own tale.
From the white town across the frozen river I heard revolver shots, followed by a loud explosion that shook the whole place and startled the three horses in my sleigh.
Inside the long, low, common room of the inn, with its high brick stove, against which half a dozen frightened-looking men and women were huddled, I asked for the proprietor, whereupon an elderly man, with shaggy hair and beard, came forth, pulling his forelock.
"I want to stay here," I said.
"Yes, your excellency," was the old fellow's reply, in Polish. "Whatever accommodation my poor inn can afford is at your service"--and he at once shouted orders to my driver to bring in my kit, while the women, all of them flat-faced peasants, made room for me at the stove.
From where I stood I could hear the sound of desultory firing across the bridge, and inquired what was in progress.
But there was an ominous silence. They did not reply, for, as I afterwards discovered, they had taken me for a high police official from Petersburg, thus accounting for the innkeeper's courtesy.
"Tell me," I said, addressing the wrinkled-faced old Pole, "what is happening over yonder?"
"The Cossacks," he stammered. "Krasiloff and his Cossacks are upon us.
They have just entered the town and are shooting down people everywhere.
Hartmann, the great patriot from Germany, has arrived, and the fight for freedom has commenced, excellency. But it is horrible. A poor woman was shot dead before my door half an hour ago, and her body taken away by the soldiers."
Tired as I was, I lost no time. With a glance to see that my own revolver was loaded, I threw aside my overcoat, and, leaving the inn, walked across the bridge into a poor narrow street of wretched-looking houses, many of them built of wood. A man limped slowly past me, wounded in the leg, and leaving blood-spots behind him as he went. An old woman was seated in a doorway, her face buried in her hands, wailing:
"My poor son!--dead!--dead!"
Before me I saw a great barricade composed of trees, household furniture, paving-stones, overturned carts, pieces of barbed wire--in fact, everything and anything the populace could seize upon for the construction of hasty defence. Upon the top, silhouetted against the clear frosty sky, was the scarlet flag of the revolution--the Red Rooster was crowing!
Excited men were there, armed with rifles, shouting and giving orders.
Then I saw that a small space had been left open against the wall of a house so that persons might pass and repass.
As I approached a wild-haired man shouted to me and beckoned frantically. I grasped his meaning. He wished me to come within. I ran forward, entered the town proper, and a few moments later the opening was closed by a dozen slabs of stone being heaped up into it by as many willing hands.
Thus I found myself in the very centre of the revolution, behind the barricades, of which there were, it seemed, six or seven. From the rear there was constant firing, and the streets in the vicinity were, I saw to my horror, already filled with dead and wounded. Women were wailing over husbands, lovers, brothers; men over their daughters and wives.
Even children of tender age were lying helpless and wounded, some of them shattered and dead.
Ah! that sight was sickening. Never had I seen wholesale butchery such as that in which I was now in the midst. I was looking about to find the German _agent provocateur_, but I failed to find him. Perhaps, having bidden the people to rise, he had himself escaped. Most probably.
Above us bullets whistled as the Cossacks came suddenly round a side street and made a desperate attack upon the barricade I had entered only a few minutes before. A dozen of those fighting for their freedom fell back dead at my feet at the first volley. They had been on top of the barricade, offering a mark to the troops of the Czar. Before us and behind us there was firing, for at the rear of us was another barricade. We were, in fact, between two deadly fires.
Revolver in hand, I stood ready to defend my own life. In those exciting moments I disregarded the danger I ran from being struck in that veritable hail of lead. Men fell wounded all around me, and there was blood everywhere. A thin, dark-headed young fellow under thirty--a Moscow student, I subsequently heard--seemed to be the ringleader, for above the firing could be heard his shouts of encouragement.
"Fight! my comrades!" he cried, standing close to me and waving the red flag he carried--the emblem of the Terror--"Down with the Czar! Kill the vermin he sends to us! Long live Germany! Long live freedom! Kill them!"
he shrieked. "They have killed your wives and daughters. Men of Ostrog--remember your duty to-day! Set an example to Russia. Do not let the Moscow fiasco be repeated here. Fight! Fight on as long as you have a drop of life-blood in you, and we shall win, we shall win! Down with the Autocrat! Down with the----"
His sentence was never finished, for at that instant he reeled backwards with half his face shot away by a Cossack bullet.
The situation was, for me, one of greatest peril. I had had no opportunity of finding the governor of the town to present my credentials, and thus obtain protection. The whole place was in open revolt, and when the troops broke down the defences, as I saw they must do sooner or later, then we should all be caught in a trap, and no quarter would be given.
The massacre would be the same as at Moscow and many other towns in Western Russia, wherein the populace had been shot down indiscriminately, and official telegrams had been sent to Petersburg reporting "order now reigns."
I sought shelter in a doorway, but scarcely had I done so than a bullet embedded itself in the woodwork a few inches from my head. At the barricade the women were helping the men, loading their rifles for them, shouting and encouraging them to fight gallantly for freedom. And suddenly I caught sight of Hartmann's evil face. He was calmly talking to a man who was no doubt also in the German employ. The rising was their work!
A yellow-haired young woman, not more than twenty, emerged from a house close by where I stood and ran past me to the barricade. As she passed I saw that she carried something in her hand. It looked like a small cylinder of metal.
Shouting to a man who was firing through a loophole near the top of the barricade, she handed it up to him. Taking it carefully, he scrambled up higher, waited for a few moments, and then, raising himself, he hurled it far into the air into the midst of an advancing troop of Cossacks.
There was a red flash, a terrific explosion which shook the whole town, wrecking the houses in the immediate vicinity, and blowing to atoms dozens of the Czar's soldiers.
A wild shout of victory went up from the revolutionists when they saw the havoc caused by the awful bomb. The yellow-haired girl returned again and brought another, which, after some ten minutes or so, was similarly hurled against the troops, with equally disastrous effect.
The roadway was strewn with the bodies of those Cossacks which General Kinski, the governor of the town, had telegraphed for, and whom Krasiloff had ordered to give no quarter to the revolutionists. In Western Russia the name of Krasiloff was synonymous with all that was cruel and brutal. It was he who ordered the flogging of the five young women at Minsk, those poor unfortunate creatures who were knouted by Cossacks who laid their backs bare to the bone. As every one in Russia knows, two of them, both members of good families, died within a few hours, and yet no reprimand did he receive from Petersburg. By the Czar and at the Ministry of the Interior he was known to be a hard man, and for that reason certain towns where the revolutionary spirit was strongest had been given into his hands.
At Kiev he had executed without trial dozens of men and woman arrested for revolutionary acts. A common grave was dug in the prison yard, and the victims, four at a time, were led forward to the edge of the pit and shot, each batch being compelled to witness the execution of the four prisoners preceding them. With a refinement of cruelty that was only equalled by the Inquisition, he had wrung confessions from women, and afterwards had them shot and buried. At Petersburg they knew these things, but he had actually been commended and decorated for his loyalty to the Czar!
And now that he had been hurriedly moved to Ostrog the people knew that his order to the Cossacks was to massacre the people, and more especially the Jewish portion of the population, without mercy.
"Krasiloff is here!" said the man whose face was smeared with blood as he stood by me. "He intends that we shall all die, but we will fight for it. The revolution has only just commenced. Soon the peasants will rise, and we will sweep the country clean of the vermin the Czar has placed upon us. To-day Kinski, the governor, has been fired at twice, but unsuccessfully. He wants a bomb, and he shall have it," he added meaningly. "Olga--the girl yonder with the yellow hair--has one for him!"--and he laughed grimly.
I recognised my own deadly peril. I stood revolver in hand, though I had not fired a shot, for I was no revolutionist. I was only awaiting the inevitable breaking down of the barricade--and the awful catastrophe that must befall the town when those Cossacks, drunk with the lust for blood, swept into the streets.
Around me men and women were shouting themselves hoarse, while the red emblem of Terror still waved lazily from the top of the barricade. The men manning the improvised defence kept up a withering fire upon the troops, who in the open road were afforded no cover. Time after time the place shook as those terrible bombs exploded with awful result, for the yellow-haired girl seemed to keep up a continuous supply of them. They were only seven or eight inches long, but hurled into a company of soldiers their effect was deadly.
For half an hour longer it seemed as though the defence of the town would be effectual, yet, of a sudden, the redoubled shouts of those about me told me the truth.
The Cossacks had been reinforced, and were about to rush the barricade.
I managed to peer forth, and there, surely enough, the whole roadway was filled with soldiers.
Yells, curses, heavy firing, men falling back from the barricade to die around me, and the disappearance of the red flag showed that the Cossacks were at last scaling the great pile of miscellaneous objects that blocked the street. A dozen of the Czar's soldiers appeared silhouetted against the sky as they scrambled across the top of the barricade, but the next second a dozen corpses fell to earth, riddled by the bullets of the men standing below in readiness.
In a moment, however, others appeared in their places, and still more and more. Women threw up their hands in despair and fled for their lives, while men--calmly prepared to die in the cause--shouted again and again, "Down with Krasiloff and the Czar! Long live the revolution!
Long live Germany! Give us the Kaiser! Victory for the people's will!"