The Vice-Governor, Ostàshkin, who was then in command of the province of Yakutsk, had given orders that these exiles should be conveyed to their appointed destinations in a manner that would have rendered the hardships of the journey quite unnecessarily severe; and when the young people learned this they made representations to the authorities, pointing out the danger that threatened them of perishing by cold and hunger on the way. They were told to come together to talk matters over, and they accordingly assembled in a dwelling-house to await the arrival of the chief of police; instead of whom, however, came an order to betake themselves at once to the police office. They now felt convinced that they were to be deported at once, without time for protest, and they refused to obey; whereupon there arrived immediately a troop of soldiers commanded by an officer, and a frightful scene began that beggars all description. The soldiers clubbed the exiles with the butts of their rifles, stabbed at them with bayonets, and fired on the defenceless assembly. Six corpses were left on the spot, among them that of a pregnant woman, and many were severely wounded. The wounded and injured—numbering twenty-seven—were then thrust into prison; and a court-martial was opened, wherein three persons were condemned to death and executed in Yakutsk, and nineteen were sentenced to penal servitude for life. That is briefly the history of the “Massacre of Yakutsk.”[104] Footnote 104: The Yakutsk massacre has lately (April, 1903) been recalled to public memory by the arrest of the Russian revolutionist, Michael Gotz, in Italy, and the attempt of the Russian Government—fortunately frustrated—to obtain his extradition. Gotz was one of the youthful exiles at Yakutsk, and was severely wounded, but survived to be court-martialled and condemned to penal servitude in the mines for life. He and his comrades were subsequently amnestied, chiefly in consequence of the notoriety given to the affair by an account of it published by the _Times_ with indignant comments, which caused such feeling both at home and abroad that even the Russian Government was affected.—_Trans._ We in Kara received the news of these horrors just when our own situation was becoming critical. Sympathy with the innocent victims and anger against their oppressors were mingled with apprehensions for ourselves; for we naturally thought, “If the Government can treat so barbarously harmless people who are not convicts, what may be done to us, ‘deprived’ as we are ‘of all rights,’ convicts in a prison whence tidings need never penetrate to the outer world?” After events justified these fears. CHAPTER XXVIII OUR CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION—SERGIUS BOBOHOV—THE END OF THE TRAGEDY