Ivan keeps on blowing furious clouds of smoke out of his pipe.
Suddenly he utters a cry, a heart-rending, pitiful cry. The burning pipe drops from his mouth!
Then rises a wild yell—an awful, horrible report!
The earth quakes and trembles, as if about to open, to vomit forth the burning stream of a thundering crater. The sky seems blackened by the fearful smoke which fills the air far and wide. Everywhere may be seen human bodies, single shattered limbs, ruins of the exploded building, flying through the air, and covering the groaning, trembling earth. But no syllable or sound of complaint, no death-rattle is now heard. All is over.
The powder-mills have flown into the air, and, though far distant from Berlin, yet this terrible explosion was felt in every part of the city.[1] In the Frederick Street the houses shook as if from an earthquake, and countless panes of glass were shattered.
With darkened brow and a burst of anger did General von Tottleben receive the news that the powder-mills had blown up, and fifty Cossacks had lost their lives thereby. He mourned for the unfortunate Cossacks and his poor serf, Ivan Petrowitsch. Still more did he lament that it was now impossible to blow up the arsenal in Berlin. But it was not his fault that the commands of his empress could not be executed. The Russians had shot away all their powder, and the stock in the powder-mills having been destroyed, there was none left to carry into execution this grand undertaking.
[Footnote 1: Archenholz: "History of the Seven Years' War," p. 194.]
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