"Like a flash I started for his yellow, pock-marked face. It seemed to me that I already had my hands about his throat. The way I did it did not surprise me—I had thought it out so carefully beforehand.
"It is frightfully hard to spring up after one has crawled or lain so long motionless on the snow. I had thought—I knew—that I must cause him no pain, that it must happen in a second, in order that he might not recover from his surprise and cry out. Therefore it was a frightful moment for me. Surely death itself is not so frightful. Every muscle in my body was strained and broken, it seemed to me. I cannot tell all that I suffered, thought, felt, in that tiny space of time.
"He had turned around toward me, and in his face was already the presentiment that he was going to die. Never have I seen anything so grewsome as his horrified look, even before I got my hands on his throat.
"He was, as it were, paralyzed. He did not think of defending himself. He was too weak even to raise a cry. I held him fast; that you can believe, for he sank slowly in the snow without a sound.
"The other one under the trees slept soundly and his throat rattled in his sleep. I went at him with the bayonet.
"Afterward I hurried back and gave the sign agreed upon. Ten minutes later the three companies surrendered. Thus I won my medal."
As I shook the hand of this hero in parting I felt that there remained in his own eyes something of the terror of the Siberian whom he had throttled, and that that look of terror would never leave his face.