On Wednesday morning the newspapers were missing from the breakfast tables, atid prudent housewives, mindful of the great strike of 1903, laid in stores from the grocery and ''delikatessen" shops. Still "more prudent folk hurried their families out of the town. In the afternoon the fire broke out, By ten that night every inch of the harbour seemed on fire. The glare from the burning ships and buildings, the thick black smoke columns of the coal wharves, the blood-red light on land and soa, made a picture I shall never forget. A storm of threats, a rattle of pistol shots, and a shower of stones greeted the firemen, and some! of them fied back to And top of the military "stuck," or incline, a party of Anarchists were stationed on the roof of a wing of the Crimean Hotel, waiting their opportunity when the rush of the populace should come.
About midnight a roar of human tumult told us that the people were coming from the harbour. So fierce and vodka-maddened were they that the officers doubted their power to stem the rush of the yelling, smoke-blackened mob and dock Circas. fows mixed with Russian students unsexed, shrieking women were evorywhere. And everywhere was the scum of our cosmopolitan town, howling, firing, and surging towards the square.
The soldiers waited between two fires, the mob in front and the Anarchists in the rear, Stronger and more farious pressed the mob, while we, who watched, blanched, thinking of the riot and destruction that threatened the city. The rioters gained ground, but the soldiers never wavered. Volley after volley rang out again and again, and yot again, and then the arrival of the machine guns For there was no besit tion in using them. 'Lhe soldiers' fac were stern the safety of some five hundred thousand of fellow-creatures and their own lives were at stake, and so the guns mowed furrow: riot in hondlong fright. They loft more work ind than our doctors could grapple with, APATHY IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS, But danger was still at our elbow—the side streets wore choked with riot Pho poaooful, frightened inmates of the houses made ready for flight.
"Here are your passports," exclaimed of our house to her maids.
"And your wollery, Hanna asked the lady's m jor my dress," was the lady's reply, and then the maid Mocha rushed off, to return in a few moments wearing hor best dross and carrying a shoot. Into this she swept all the small articles of plate and everything valuable that she could ley hands on, and then threw herself into an attitude that ex-prossed her readiness for any emergency.
Than the Russian apathy came out.
believe you could all go to bed," said the master of the house. Indeed he had already made several attempts in. that direction. "It is getting light, and Ivan could wake us if anything happened, Where is he?"
"Why, Ivan and Boris have been making targets of themselves on the roof!" exclaimed Mocha _scornfully. "And then suddenly they fell flat the leads and crawled away. Some soldier thought they had bombs and fired at them."
An hour- passed, the street emptied Manis, the cook, remarking that at any and grow quiet, and our household at last rate her corpse would be buried clean. decided on bed. Our excitable Polish And, strange to say, most of us, worn cook, whose affections are centred on the out by the anxiety and watch of the concierge of the "'duma" (municipal hall), previous night, contrived to get some and who had been with difficulty pre-sleep. vented from rushing off to the boulevard, On the Friday, owing to the prospect had the key of the kitchen returned to of a naval battle in the harbour, and the her, and soon all of us were in bed, and mysterious movements of the fleet, mat-some of us actually asleep. ters again became exceedingly exciting.
was strange on Thursday morning But by Sunday the Potemkin was to watch the town striving to resume gone and confidence was restored. It its ordinary course. The- iceman, was wonderful how the people adapted milk women, and bakers again began themselves to the changed circumstances. their rounds. The sunrise was beauti-'The squares had been turned into encampful that morning over the red-tinted ments, and the dvorniks and workmen and clouds and sea, but what the sun their wives sat about gossiping, joking, illumined in the harbour few. of us and laughing with the soldiers off duty. here care to remember. The Jewish They gave quite a homelike look to the "bund" and Maxim Gorky's heroes had state of siege. In the evening came the had their day, and I do not think th call to prayers, and the sound of the results could have been satisfactory strong. voices of the men chanting the to them. Ruined buildings, burnt and evening hymn added to the senso of sunken ships, quays that had been crowded with busy open and were now turned security and order.
Looking back, I only now begin to into smoking ash heaps, were on every realise how great was the danger we ran hand, and everywhere, too, lay the charred and how fragments of human beings who had been burnt beside the vodka casks, from which they had been too intoxicated to move 'They saved Ode struction and tens of thousands of hor when the flames had swept up to the Tt had been " holocaust indeed. Ni people from unbridled Just and rapine.—wonder the men whose duty took' them "E, "in the "Daily Mail." to the inland harbour do not care to speak of that morning's work. Twenty: wagons of dead bodies passed up
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.