Could it be that these words were about to come true there before my eyes? I could not believe it. Unreality was in the air. The truck looked as if it had been wheeled on to the stage from the property-room. The guns might have been of papier-maché. The occupants themselves seemed like boys playing a new game, rather than like men going out to kill and to die. An automobile driven by a civilian whirled from a side street. Three sailors and a couple of armed factory workers ordered the chauffeur to halt. They backed their command by pointing their guns at his head, and he promptly obeyed. One of them took the front seat. Two stretched themselves flat on the mud-guards and pointed their rifles in front of them. The others climbed into the tonneau. The car whizzed away out of sight. The crowds on the sidewalk kept one eye on the guns, and one eye on a convenient exit in case of trouble. I walked in the direction of the Hotel Europe. I had gone a distance of three or four blocks when the sound of a shot brought all to a sudden stop. The crowd turned as a single man and fled in the opposite direction. The crowd was quicker and more earnest in flight than I. Before I had time to realize what had happened, I had been knocked to my knees. I found myself jammed against the iron grating of a basement door, with what seemed like half of Petrograd pushing me through the bars. A moment later some one in the rear shouted, “Kharasho!” (All right), and the crowd climbed off my back. I picked myself up unhurt. A soldier standing near had been shoved through a plate-glass window, and his face and hands were covered with ugly cuts splashing blood liberally on the sidewalk. I waited while a formidable armored car passed, then crossed the street and turned the corner leading to the hotel. Just as I reached the entrance, I heard the rush of running footsteps behind me, and turned to see a crowd of men, women, and children tumbling out of the Nevsky as fast as willing legs could carry them. Off in the direction of the Gostinny Dvor the staccato _rat-a-tat-tat_ of machine-guns sounded like the beat of a snare-drum, interrupted at intervals by the sharp, quick crack of rifles. However much those men with guns had seemed like small boys playing at being dangerous, there was no doubt that the sounds were ominous enough. All that day Petrograd lay terrified and trembling in the hollow of the Bolsheviki hand. Most of the time the armored cars rode peacefully up and down the Nevsky. Now and then something, nobody knows what, would start things. The guns rattled and the crowds ran. “Somebody shot from the window,” one of the Bolsheviki would venture furiously. “Provokator! Provokator!” some one in the crowd would cry. Occasionally the moan of a wounded man rose above the clatter of hurrying feet, but the guns were mercifully inaccurate and the death toll unbelievably small.