Rising, I dodged aside, thinking to avoid bullets, and then dashed against a bale of wool, one of a long row. Clambering over it, I dropped beside a man crouching on the other side.
"Michael, is it you?" whispered Verbitzsky.
"Yes. We're lost, of course?"
"No. Keep still. Let them pass."
The police ran past us down the middle aisle left between high walls of wool bales. They did not notice the narrow side lane in which we were crouching.
"Come. I know a way out," said Verbitzsky. "I was all over here this morning, looking round, in case we should be surprised to-night."
"What's this?" I whispered, groping, and touching something in his hand.
"Kojukhov's bombs. I have them both. Come. Ah, poor Boris, he's with Zina now!"
The bomb was a section of iron pipe about two inches in diameter and eighteen inches long. Its ends were closed with iron caps. Filled with nitroglycerine, such pipes are terrible shells, which explode by concussion. I was amazed to think of the recklessness of Boris in tapping them together.