My strength came back to me, the strength of madness, and I rushed away, down that stricken street, with but one clear idea in my mind,—to die avenging Anne, for I knew no power on earth could save her.
As I ran the tumult waxed louder, coming, as I guessed, from the great square to which the street led at this end.
Half-way along, a woman, huddled in the roadway, clutched at me, with a moaning cry. I shook off her grasp, glanced at her, and saw she was Natalya. The faithful soul had not been able to follow her mistress far.
“Where have they taken her?” I cried.
She could not speak, but she glared at me, a world of anguish and horror in her dark eyes, and pointed in the direction I was going, and I hurried on. I had a “killer” in my hand, the deadly little bludgeon of lead, set on a spiral copper spring, that was the favorite weapon of the mob, though I haven’t the least notion as to when I picked it up.
Now I was on the fringe of the crowd that overflowed from the square, and was pushing my way forward towards the centre, a furious vortex of noise and confusion. A desperate fight was in progress, surging round something, some one.
“It is Anna Petrovna!” a woman screamed above the din. “They tore her clothes from her; they are beating her to death with their nagaikas! Mother of Mercy! That such things should be!”
“‘À la vie et à la mort.’ Save her; avenge her,” some one shouted, I myself I think, and the cry was taken up and echoed hoarsely on all sides. So, there must be many of the League in the turmoil.
Now I was in the thick of it, a swaying, struggling mass of men and horses; many of the horses plunging riderless as the wild horsemen were dragged from their saddles, and disappeared in that stormy sea of outraged humanity. The Cossacks were getting the worst of it, for once, not a doubt of that.
“Back,” roared a mighty voice. “We have her; back I say; make way there,—let us pass!”