We fell in with the first ranks.
Like a black river, filling all the street, without song or cheer we
poured through the Red Arch, where the man just ahead of me said in
a low voice: "Look out, comrades! Don't trust them. They will fire,
surely!" In the open we began to run, stooping low and bunching
together, and jammed up suddenly behind the pedestal of the
Alexander Column.
"How many of you did they kill?" I asked.
"I don't know. About ten...."
After a few minutes huddling there, some hundreds of men, the army
seemed reassured and without any orders suddenly began again to flow
forward. By this time, in the light that streamed out of all the
Winter Palace windows, I could see that the first two or three
hundred men were Red Guards, with only a few scattered soldiers.
Over the barricade of firewood we clambered, and leaping down inside
gave a triumphant shout as we stumbled on a heap of rifles thrown
down by the _yunkers_ who had stood there. On both sides of the main
gateway the doors stood wide open, light streamed out, and from the
huge pile came not the slightest sound.
Carried along by the eager wave of men we were swept into the right
hand entrance, opening into a great bare vaulted room, the cellar of
the East wing, from which issued a maze of corridors and
stair-cases. A number of huge packing cases stood about, and upon
these the Red Guards and soldiers fell furiously, battering them
open with the butts of their rifles, and pulling out carpets,
curtains, linen, porcelain plates, glassware.
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