There was a ring of finality in his tone. The men looked at him in astonishment. “Shoot us?” they cried incredulously. “Yes,” he answered. “I would rather that we should all die than that this American should say that revolutionists of Russia were base and revengeful!” This time all the hands went up. A committee from the city Duma arrived at that moment, and as the cadets filed down the stairs, the leader took the hand of the first one and placed it in the hand of a sailor. “This is prisoner number one, and I trust his life into your hands. Guard it for the honor of the Revolution,” he said. When the last man was delivered, the sailor who brought him downstairs tossed a contemptuous glance in his direction and said: “The last of the trash!” He was quickly hushed by one of his companions. Outside in the Morskaya an occasional shot sounded above the shuffle of feet in the courtyard. “Provokator! Provokator!” the sailors cried, and cautioned each other against being aroused to response. Meanwhile the frightened telephone operators slipped quietly away in the dark. None of the terrors they had feared in the long hours of the afternoon had materialized. They all went on strike, and the next time I called at the exchange the switchboards were manned by sailors, soldiers, and a few factory workers, whose poor bewildered brains and clumsy fingers struggled desperately to master the intricate science of plugging in and plugging out. The telephone exchange and the War Hotel were not the only spots where trouble raged that Sunday. At the Vladimirsky Military School, Bolshevik forces and cadets fought a desperate battle, and many were killed. Some of the cadets were reported to be frightfully mutilated by bayonet thrusts. On the Gogol, not far from St. Isaac’s Cathedral, there were a few hideous moments of slaughter. An armored car came down the street. Inside were three cadets and a chauffeur. The people in the street hurried into a doorway for shelter. In the group were civilian men, women, and children, and six sailors. The car came to an abrupt stop just opposite the doorway, and the guns, opening fire, sprayed death into that cluster of humans. A workman was the first to fall, and a little newsboy crumpled on the pavement beside him. The sailors darted toward the car, and jabbed their bayonets through the holes in the steel plates. The shrieks of the men inside told plainly that the weapons had struck home. The firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun. When the shrieks suddenly died away, they dragged three dead men out and stretched them on the cobbles. They were covered with blood and bayonet wounds until they were unrecognizable. The chauffeur, who was uninjured, begged for mercy, and a Bolshevik in the crowd said: “For God’s sake, let him go. Let’s not kill any more of them than we have to!” [Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman The Winter Palace from the Red Arch]