His words gave me strength. I got up, stood erect and said: “Yes, I will die as a hero.” Then, for about ten minutes I gazed at the faces of our executioners, scrutinizing their features. It was hard to distinguish in them signs of humanity. They were Russian soldiers turned inhuman. The lines in their faces were those of brutal apes. “My God! What hast Thou done to Thy children?” I prayed. All the events of my life passed before me in a long procession. My childhood, those years of hard toil in the little grocer’s shop of Nastasia Leontievna; the affair with Lazov; my marriage to Botchkarev; Yasha; the three years of war; they all passed through my imagination, some incidents strangely gripping my interest for a moment or two, others flitting by hastily. Somehow that episode of my early life, when I quarrelled with the little boy placed in my charge and the undeserved whipping I got from his mother stood out very prominently in my mind. It was my first act of self-assertion. I had rebelled and escaped.... Then there was that jump into the Ob. It almost seemed that it was not I who sought relief in its cold, deep waters from the ugly Afanasi. But I wished that I had been drowned then, rather than die such a death.... CHAPTER XIX SAVED BY A MIRACLE The investigation committee finally appeared in the distance. Petrukhin was leading it. There were all the twelve members present, the two absentees apparently having joined the other ten. “You see, how kind we are,” some of the soldiers said. “We are having the committee present at your execution.” Not one of us answered. “We have all been to see Sablin, the Commander-in-Chief,” Petrukhin announced as soon as he approached near enough to Pugatchov. “He said that Botchkareva would have to be shot, but not necessarily now and with this group.” A ray of hope was kindled in my soul. “Nothing of the sort!” Pugatchov bawled angrily. “What’s the matter here? Why this delay? The list is already made up.” The soldiers supported Pugatchov. “Shoot her! Finish her now! What’s the use of bothering with her again!” cried the men. But just as Pugatchov guessed that Petrukhin had obtained the delay in the hope of saving me, so the latter had realized that spoken words would not be sufficient to secure the fulfilment of his order. He had provided himself with a note from Sablin. “Here is an order from the Commander-in-Chief,” Petrukhin declared, pulling out a paper. “It says that Botchkareva shall be taken to my compartment in the railway carriage and kept there under guard.” Pugatchov jumped up as if he had been stung. But the committee now rallied to the support of Petrukhin, maintaining that orders were orders, and that I should be executed later.