geeites tie i last eaigs ptiepiercecaescieree tess eatiarers Ipseletessuettcapteaseatsntiscansnatinasearsesesoasticsee> TEESE Rreerevere ven 7e ebreetrey “Wee HOEK eer paseetestitas resererereresseeegisitenee suereione eee : EISPLI GRIEVE PUTTS ATU Te DIETER LEAT LOTTE HY Dee hery vee bere ey MEETS Parse wens) aarp neuen eTetyreree: re eee TIEZULE PUREST TEE TEIN SOPLPLVIT IT HVT ST MITRE SIGE FETT eeliarenteriiesuecetarecresrresteieerirsaibreseres cor Ttee Tea rs Cateye’ ered SepiutAtaasasbibidhtectesthisaaseess marie TE ETEILTEA ET TELEP TLE TI CIC TEES area APU weve TEST TEL RECT bI Wee TA. terrae ie 2 Nehaieaes ese aeeers Seieee FPR Nevertire rere tresEe: cs Ed SFCTLENIREDE HE LINHA PETIT th oae tere rests LIT sty aay . BEecEE cee TER Eat tes oe PME LLIEVERILT EWEN?{ eeUTNE UAT ME Mann il Ue ‘ } M ac aa Pa ie oe ae ee A ~ ee Ee el e i } ie a) i} 4 | ‘ i. ic 4 RONALD LAMBERT TREE FROM THE MIRADOR LIBRARY GIFT OF RONALD TREE aietetera S. re | i u} wi ee | t ce st TF H WUAEUURRRORUERRGTI: WUCREGHVUN A Rioee aha hea py OHTTATAVRRARRA TRU R HGRA EE aNUH ROHNER ROAD } LETT MVGHTTETAPERaGs MUU OTHECTIT THT TUUR GUTTITEUAT TOUTE 0 eect CUT ULATEROTVSTUHV ATOLL UU TUGSULAUAAHO AMES HEAD UPSTUR TELE EU TTT LUT RRUR TUR ERUU TEE TaeUUTTT th A EC Te eT ee Te eee sie EEaor | THE WHITE DEVIL of THE BLACK SEAAPTA LAVUUSVOTAIAOOUATOTATAVUGVAHOUIVOVESEOWIVHVESEUHHOLALUTOGAATIY ES ReeNEScceseceeabeL SUUUA AAO TUL f mt | ‘ i The aiid irl ae eT ! } if )Py ed td aed sc tie ae as De THE SWORD OF SHAMYL, WHICH FOR GENERATIONS WAS A TALISMAN IN THE FAMILY OF THE WHITE DEVIL | i LTT BUTT TEETER ETND Ae a a a . A i : N) } 6 . , a Vi u MJ 1? ae - eureDTT TTTHTOTO UT UTUUTITTTHTUUTIUFGUEUTTGTOTEVITTVUGUU ATO ezeeseeees DEAT el i led ae [2 tet Ee DET = 4 re ae re _— ae SATE ALTTATTEALETEE CR EETTCTETT TCT eCTHE WHITE DEVIL of THE BLACK SEA BY LEWIS STANTON PALEN COLLABORATOR ON “Beasts, Men and Gods” and “Man and Mystery in Asta” NEW YORK MINTON, BALCH & COMPANY 1924! MLE STH Hu HUE an tn SHEE Mn , WHT RHa aah ea i me am WHE iH Hh HULL IH ET ed j if COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY iF LEWIS STANTON PALEN H ik 7 a Pea | Ge Ve i | haa a i a ae iy hae we Ht WA iH i 50558 | ray) Hy) a a ie ty a ae i. ae 1 He | | ie 8} a th) uy} ih a é: @}).8 2 ae € e " e ea e Cc * 6 4h oO oO ee 2! ee¢ ° ae Ae Hk Wee aa rane ca ane aH va ai Mi) +t | i Wh e “ s : itt Printed in the United States of America by a a J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORE hae VW 1 HH wen if oe HH ver rf QUUCTH ESLER TT HETCONTENTS PAGE ROREWORD o> 6 fe ie ee as ee eee vt CHAPTER f From Kiser to cHEe URAtS) =. 2 6 72) I Il Browne Up a VooKa Factory 3. 2° 4). 13 IIT” ‘TRAPPED BY DESERTERS 52 <8 <9) 9 oon one ee EV. “CHARGING WINDMIEES) <9. 9 ee © V- In) TRENCHES OF SNOW = 9 4) cy ee 0 Vi “aia: SworD OF SHAMYD) 4) 20) a0 5 Will sEXECUTED!) i) ct 5) eS ee 7s VIII Over tHe STEPPESIN FULL Fricut . . . 82 Exe “Our ror My Own’ RANSOM 3) 6052 0 Os Xo ACTARTAR) WEDDING = 5. ct eee Oy MT eLRavine My Coan Gaiss sn oi eer XII Srtitmnc My Sout ror GASOLENE. . . . 126 MITE CHAUFFEUR TO THE KMREMLIN © 9206) 9 elo XIV My First Visir TO THE CHEKA . . . « 148 Xie) LIMIIRACLES. AND) SEARCHES) 94 a) uous eemmnnnG XVI A FortTNIGHT IN THE CouNTRY © 3 ee ly XVII Orricers, ExpLosionNs AND ARMS . . . - 178 XVIII Away rrom Moscow aT Last. . . . e« 185 MDXO @OuDEy THE VWATER-SPOUD 4 | sen eben ceeLO? XX Over THE FRONTIER TO KIEFF . . . - « 203 V; we Sams poe es eh nae a j i h % . CHAPTER i XXI i XXII H XXIII i XXIV XXV i XXVI i XXVIL i XXVIII H Ht aan ie) ah WO ann pan ana | ai Pen iT 4H etd viii Y ai iH a A ae ei 1 ; i} ae aa ae tae ey -) h I] aa fi j wae. al i) i i ie Vy Hi 1S rene POS ep PRE Se NOS Te = ae POPPA TPL TTRRUO TAT ATA TASER TR LUPE STATE en EET Contents KIEFF TO THE CRIMEA REVERSING THE CHASE ON A COMMISSAR A Bir oF THE BritisH NAvy THE WHITE PAPAKHA . THe Last Days or AcTIVE RESISTANCE CLEARING THE DEcKS BEAUTY SAVES A WOMAN Spy Cast Orr! . Au LARGE Ae e ERY TERETE EAE DON SENTONGER TT ERO LEER STE ETE SESE THUG PAGE 212 219 239 253 266 271 278 287 294FOREWORD HEN it happens in our more or less prosaic times that one appears among us with some of the leading characteristics of Robin Hood, Don Quixote, and Captain Kidd rolled into one com- posite personality, it is legitimate to slip back into the age of story telling and sing some of the deeds of so anachronistic a soul. Like the Knight of Sherwood Forest he fought for his sovereign while his sovereign was away and had the five chief leaders of his sovereign’s enemies within a few hours of death, from which only a fortuitous and unforeseeable event saved them; like Cervantes’ hero he tilted at windmills but with hand grenades instead of lances for the fray; and like the bold pirate he commandeered ships with which he ran down and captured others whom he wanted. To escape from an argument along the lines of present day thought he has admitted himself that he is a creature of another age and that the latest pos- sible period in which his personality would have fitted was the time of Napoleon. His enemies have helped to draw attention to his story by giving him the name of “The White Devil,” VilAPF HEAUUESETPSUT OUTED PETRUS HE es Eee eee en AHO O AGATA ADEE RY UU AVALOS ULL ai } / Foreword ; which the officers of the British Fleet operating out 1 | of Constantinople in 1918 and 191g rounded out for | us to “The White Devil of the Black Sea.” il Courage, sheer and undaunted, always draws its i | meed of praise. During the War there were so if many striking instances of bravery that it will stand i | as one of the great tragedies of all time that the iW results of the War have not been more worthy of the | | measureless sacrifices and deeds of heroism it called i ) forth. 1 When to this knightly trait is added an indescrib- i able something which, for want of a better and more i worthy term, we must label “devilishness,” these | | qualities raise their possessor up out of the ranks of Hl the unusual into the realm of the unique. i I first heard of The White Devil from his mother, | who had been a Maid of Honour at the Russian Court during the reigns of Alexander II and Alex- ander III and was married from the Court during the latter’s reign. For over two years after she saw her son early one winter morning walk out into the dill snow with his wife, who was a Princess of one of the leading families among the Russian nobility, she never knew where these two outcasts disguised as peasants were or even whether they were still alive, until someone brought her word that they had turned FE Aree ie eee es eed AS | eae i up in the Black Sea and that he was known there a | by this sobriquet. Vill MERAY ALAA EAA ALERT ERE ERRATA TO UO EOU TATA EREU ORO EA EAA aA SAForeword Another three years elapsed and [I met her in Europe, whither this son had invited her to come and share the home where he worked as a carpenter and his wife as a masseuse. It was there among his saws and planes that I first heard the rough outline of his tale and proposed to him that we write it down. His answer was char- acteristic and more or less an epitome of his whole career. No, he wouldn’t write it down; for he never could sit quiet at a desk long enough to make whole pages of manuscript. That was quite out of his realm. As we chatted on and I sketched for him the possibility of making a book that might win the heart and mind of the public sufficiently to lift him and his family out of the drudgery and want into which the flood of Bolshevism had swept them, he thought it a rosy dream but something that could only be taken advantage of by “indoor folks” and as much as made clear that writing was still a busi- ness to be left to clerks and priests, as it had been during the Middle Ages. The thought, however, of being able to relieve his wife of her part of the drudgery and of having once more some of the things which money can buy began to ferment in his mind and he finally announced that he would tell the story to his mother bit by bit and that she could write it down. The next time we met he had decided that most of the material was too ixein PROTESTED MPA ULACDESESPEESUUEAT ATTIRE LSU EN SEH SAAEA TAU READE cece AAEM OS AROAO EE f Pa | ie | ; Foreword 7 masculine to be properly handled by any woman, | } however intimately she may have known through i, hard experiences something comparable with the life 4 he had led, and that he must therefore write himself i ; for short intervals at a time, that is, so much as he i| could stand of such a form of work. The next re- i ! port I had from him helps round out the indication ia of his character and was: it | “If I do a thing at all, I must put all I’ve got into i” it and so have started working ten or twelve hours if a day until I finish the job.” i, In this way he did “finish the job” and feels, I i | know, that he has made some great sacrifice, if not i ) to principle, at least to that more vigorous and active i self which never before has been so continuously it | and consistently harnessed or confined. What were Hl discussed at first as simply his “notes” for the story i have become practically the unaltered text of it, for | they were set down in such a clear and straight- Hh forward style that I have endeavoured to preserve i in the English phrasing as nearly as possible the ex- H | act form and wording of his original Russian, only Ht omitting here and there passages which seemed to i me less vital or interesting and asking him in others i to develop the details more at length, as he had HH previously given me the story in verbal form. Hi In order that the narrative may be as direct and | | simple as possible I have left it entirely in the first i x a | TTT eT TneForeword person, even though his name is nowhere mentioned in the volume. If in places you find our hero seemingly devoid of all semblance of precaution in his dealings with the sworn enemies of himself and his class, or if you find at times his narrative smacks a bit of bravado, remember that caution and modesty are not essential in the character equipment of a dare- devil and that their possession by our subject might as readily have carried him beneath the eternal sod, leaving us with no story save the short one on his tombstone. Perhaps it were better that the reader should here turn to Chapter One and go through The White Devil’s own story before reading the following para- graphs which attempt to give a short resume of what his earlier life and previous military experiences had been, for then this sketch of his former years will take on a greater interest and will help to answer many of the questions which must arise as to what possible conditions of youth could have produced such a temperament and character as is revealed in the entirely unusual and incredible experiences he relates. His earlier life story, as he outlined it to me, runs somewhat as follows: After a happy childhood passed largely in those princely surroundings of a great country estate in Russia, he entered the Pages’ Corps of His Majesty XlHLH Aen HHA rR Fabel td SUE ih Hie at HAH i va yl Foreword no Nicolas II in 1900 at the age of eleven. Of his years i ! there in the Pages’ School he admits that he had very 1 little spare time for his studies and was chiefly occu- | pied with all sorts of nonsense and tricks. This iH brought him regularly into difficulties with his par- ents at home over his bad marks and with his teachers | at school over his outrageous pranks. On the other : | hand he always found time for anything like mili- Hi tary exercises, gymnastics, riding, and carpentering, | all of which appealed to him strongly; and in these i lines of sport and games he seems always to have been an acknowledged leader among his fellow ‘a students. Also he was very fond of singing and early in his il school days formed from among the best voices a | chorus which he trained himself at every clandestine i opportunity. As such a pastime could not well be | hidden from the masters, it happened that instead of the usual chastisement for this extra curriculum i activity, they commended him and entrusted to him ik the organisation of a regular school chorus which i might take part in the yearly concerts given by the Hl School of Pages on the anniversary of its founda- Hh tion, December 12. i On the first of these occasions his chorus had 1 to perform in the presence of the Czar and other iH | members of the royal family. For a boy of his if years it was naturally one of the most thrilling aH xl HUDLULTERENTRL UTLEY EeForeword moments of his life when the Czar asked that the singing be continued after his chorus had already rendered several of the old Russian songs, and later at the end of the concert summoned this boy to him to thank him personally for the music and to express the hope that it would not be the last time he should hear them sing. When the time came for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the school, December 12, 1902, it was a particularly momentous and difficult crisis for this amateur conductor, inasmuch as not only the Imperial Russian family were to be present but also a number of foreign royal princes and, in honour of such guests, artists from the Imperial Opera; a number of officers of the Guard Regiment, all former pages, were brought in to support the youth- ful voices. It was a wonderful night for a lad of fourteen to be conducting a chorus of over one hundred voices in the presence of royalty. But Dis- aster followed quick on the heels of Triumph! To give it in his own words: “Thank Heaven, all went smoothly and, when the Czar had commended me for the fine execution of the choruses, I was so crazy with delight that when I met the German teacher passing down one of the dark corridors of the building, I couldn’t keep my hands from stripping him of his frock coat and hiding it—for which disregard of dignity and au- xi , ae) Anongpm TT ETA INTO TAHIR He cece OUTTA HRT EA a | Foreword . thority I was immediately placed in the school i | lockup.” i | Fortunately the Czar came to know of the inci- i dent and requested that the young conductor be re- \ | leased as a favour to him. it After these successes he became more and more i devoted to vocal music and worked consistently over i it, especially taking keen pleasure in the formation ii | and training of choruses among the people on the i ! great estate where the family always spent their i | summers. 7 iy And here, though it does not directly concern The Hl White Devil’s career, I cannot refrain from repeat- " ing the tale he once told me of how these lands came i into the possession of his ancestors, for it carries i one back into the vast age of grandeur which the i | necessities of our present industrialised and organ- ii ised life have pressed back into the realm of the iH ne’er returnable. It was in the reign of the first i of the Romanoffs that the ancestor of The White Hi Devil received from his Czar a vast grant of lands il on the edge of the steppes southeast of the Urals and i thus founded a great estate. One of his descendants i subsequently added to this an area slightly greater i than the Imperial grant by purchasing from the it Bashkirs in a novel manner. He ascended a hill in ll the tract they were considering and said simply: zi X1V | AW ae ETT UTTER TERETE TACT EeForeword “I take all the lands that my eye from here can cover.” The horizon for one’s boundary! As was the fore- bear, so in many ways is the offspring—ready to at- tempt practically anything his eye can compass. You naturally ask, what became of all these lands? After a time it was found the estate was too large to ad- minister effectively and so great sections were dis- posed of at various times until, within the last gen- eration, it had dwindled to somewhere around 225,000 acres and is now only some seventy odd thousand. It was over these lands and the neighbouring prairies that The White Devil developed his strong- est passion for horses and riding. Brought up since a mere boy by Cossack mountaineer body servants who were all marvellous horsemen, he became so devoted to the riding of the steppes that he spent much of his summer holidays in visiting the nomad Kirghiz and Tartar tribes, where he would often catch with a lasso a wild horse from one of the herds and saddle and break it as his most thrilling and delightful pastime. As good a rider as he must have been, he, however, paid toll at different times with two broken arms and two broken legs, but with it all became so thoroughly wrapt up in his riding and training that he not only followed closely the life of the plains but devoted himself for three years xVait }r aan Wena EGE Baa j pepedeyael ae aEe co abe eon ; ah) aaaeaaee ri} Taal shay : eae Deel A rl BUUUPREORLETTh LL SHUT ETT TET Es eT EEE TAUUSHAAAHHATVU TOA TA TSUNEO eae REE AS EA RA RA AAR RARABADARASRARASSEAABSCADSAERAURARD RESEND RAAT YL ESR SSS CREO SUPA RKAEMRELRAU EDO NMRSN SO USReSe RUD U ROD, HASSE RESURUROSEOMERU EARP EES EAD MAN Foreword to a special course under the finest master his country afforded. He never tires of telling how his father, who was a Russian Colonel and later Equerry to the Czar, used to send him into the steppes to buy and bring home a herd of two or three hundred Kirghiz horses for him to select and train the best for sale to the horse lovers of St. Petersburg and Moscow. As though to try him out in every way, Fate visited him with constant physical injuries. At dif- ferent times in sport and escapades his right leg was once more broken and his skull was cracked before he entered the more serious period of the wounds received during the war against Germany. Back in 1907 he joined the Chevalier Guard Regi- ment of Her Majesty the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna as a private volunteer. For him the most interesting part of the service with such a cavalry regiment was naturally the summer camp where the annual army manceuvres also took place and it was during one of these that his horse, gallop- ing in one of the leading squads of the regiment, put its foot in a hole and fell. When the rest of the regiment had galloped over and the dust cleared it was found that this time the left leg was again broken and his mount had also a fractured leg. Later, The White Devil retired from the regiment and occupied himself for a time with breeding and raising horses. ‘Three years later, in 1912, he ex- xvlForeword plored a large section of Siberia in a motor car with a view to choosing the best site for a tract for breed- ing horses for the army and for general sale. The year 1913 saw him back in Russia and the following year he was once more in his regiment crossing the Austrian frontier. His military career was diverse and trying. In August, 1914, he received the St. George’s Cross for blowing up a railway station in the enemy’s rear, followed by a second citation and award two days later for gallantry in a bayonet charge during which he was wounded. Six days afterwards he was pro- moted to the rank of adjutant and a week later, when the regiment was sent to rest in the rear, he dis- covered that he had received a flesh wound some time during the fighting of the last few days but had been so occupied and dead from fatigue that he had not previously noticed his shoulder was shot through. A fortnight later this wound sent him back for a two months’ stay in hospital in Petrograd. In February of 1915 he was again wounded with a shell splinter in the side and a bullet in the lung. This meant hospital again until July, when he returned to his regiment and was promoted to the rank of Second Lieutenant. In August, while driving a motor car with a trained nurse and a party of staff officers, he had seven ribs broken and all the muscles torn from his left breast. Following this he was again evacu- XVIl, Weave PEREURPRURIGHEU ORLA URGER GREAT WEARS E ORO R hee SEeaRHa HAT naneal MHULLAR TRV RUHRGRER ROR ATT. Trae MUVETRVAPARTTAT ARTETA TUT RTRT EGRET GEE Ee AUTSEAYHOUAUOTATTOTEAESTOGUEASTAAUAT LOS EGLOTEVTSTIGRAGEY ELGG OG Ex eceReseOaeG OM ATSASTHALGATGTNAPEVEATATRARTTOVIATOGUOTUTRESEREGTOTREINAVOGTOTITPOAUORIY HAN EO Eade _ , ! eee tile itil tein i aa eeu | Sy te Foreword ated to Petrograd and retired from the army. By June of 1916 he had recovered sufficiently to enlist in the Motor Transport Company of the Head- quarters of the Ninth Army and was appointed Com- manding Officer of the Technical Department. While he was cutting off an electric current in a newly occupied Austrian trench during the month following, he was partially buried by the explosion of an Austrian shell and had his nose broken by a falling beam. His promotion to Captain followed. Incredible as it may seem, even for this nine-lived hero of ours, it was the same month that the motor car he was driving was overturned by the explosion of a shell and he was getting away all right until some inconsiderate Austrian soldier shot him through the lung with a rifle bullet. It seems his broken nose did not keep him out of action for the month and I never have been told whether the pierced lung did or not. At any rate his additional service before January, 1917, won for him the rank of Major and left him among that tragic body of Russian Officers who did what they could to fight the battle of the Allies until the Revolution and Kerenski’s “Order Number One” began the “shooting from behind,” which made of these men during the following days of Bolshevism simply hunted animals. But if you would see how one of these stood con- XVIliForeword stantly at bay and took an enormous toll from the pursuers of his class, read the simple tale he tells in these following pages and wonder what com- bination of stars ushered him into this world. LEWIS STANTON PALEN. BOUVERET Switzerland 7 September, 1923 XIXTHE WHITE DEVIL OF THE BLACK SEA CHARA RY! FROM KIEFF TO THE URALS ARLY in 1917 I was convalescing in Kieff, slowly recovering from the various wounds and fractures received at the front, and had a deso- late feeling in my heart as I heard all the rumours of a coming revolution. A cold terror crept over us all at the news of the events which took place at the end of February in Petrograd, culminating in the overwhelming report of the abdication of the Tsar, which plunged us into deep despair. I realised from the first that among the members of the Provisional Government there was no one of sufficient moral integrity and strength to carry on; and, consequently, as the long existent propaganda had been persistently directed against the war, it was evident that for us the war had come to an end, to a disgraceful end, dishonourable toward the Allies. Close upon the first events of the Revolution, the Provisional Government published the now famous Army order, known as “Order Number One,” by IPAARL AL TAU TREMOR UU ERO TART EPAPER EG LUHEERURVERAGHTATAOTAERREORUT ORO eeeePo REGU TV HOOT OU PRNT ETTORE ASLO HDD ratte MURA RTEn eye aR SURTE Yi PTET EP THAT TUORRROTT HOTTA tab ' a a a i] i a PEaUeeaeeeea eae ae apn) i | ‘Be. 1 A en eee The White Devil of the Black Sea which all discipline at the front was shattered and power taken away from the officers commanding and bestowed upon the ignorant mass of soldiers, cor- rupted and demoralised by groups of communists and socialists who tried to persuade the soldiers to leave the front and to murder their officers, who would naturally not participate in the vile treachery of desertion. Moreover, the soldiers were assured that hence- forth everything belonged to them, and that any one who possessed property was liable to have it confis- cated or merely disposed of by the people. If the owner protested, he could be killed as a counter- revolutionary. Thus we were forsaken! We, who sacrificed our blood willingly and with resignation for our country and who refused to violate our oath, were not only murdered and tortured, but our fam- ilies were also exposed to robbery, violation, and often murder for the simple reason that their hus- bands, fathers or sons loyally served their country. Those who remained alive became paupers, because everything they possessed, property, money, treas- ures, libraries, clothing, lands, houses, was taken away from them. It is hardly possible to imagine what happened in our unfortunate country when a disorganised horde of twelve million men, intoxicated with alcohol and, worse still, with the crazing spirit of a newly distilled license, swept over the country in their return from the front, robbing, burning, and destroying as they went. They had no regard what- | ever for the welfare of the nation or of the people 2,TPP R eee eee nae From Kieff to the Urals as a whole, but consulted only their own selfish and animal wishes. At that time I was serving with the cavalry re- mount and, when the O. C. ordered me to take an oath of loyalty to the Provisional Government, I refused point blank and declared that I would never swear allegiance to a lot of criminal swindlers. This, of course, necessitated my retirement from the Army and it was with a sore heart that I was closely fol- lowing the events developing around me. A deep feeling of wrath and hatred was gradually permeat- ing my whole being against these conscious and de- termined destroyers of discipline and of their native land. In June I had to proceed to Petrograd on busi- ness. It was with the greatest difficulty that my wife and I succeeded in getting into the train, be- Cause it was so jammed with soldiers, nearly all drunk, dirty, and most exasperating. The thing that amazed me most of all was the manner in which they behaved towards women. I was terrified for my wife (we had been married only three weeks before the Revolution broke out) ; but in the event of any trouble my decision was firm and resolute. I had kept my Browning and determined it should help me, if necessary, to prevent any one from behaving with disrespect toward my wife. Our journey hap- pily terminated without any incident. In Petrograd my mother and sisters told me all about the momentous disturbing events which had happened in February, though while we ourselves were there for just a few days, things were compara- 3FEET] et aha } HERO UARORIRRT RUTTER TT: WHERUR ER EM eee naES: i NPUUWUTUADUU GET Serer T hii ia cd RES ners re wa MUTE EAE PY REUTERS POT LEU URE Pe 0 HEE ETE UE EEE The White Devil of the Black Sea tively quiet. It was, however, most depressing to us to see red rags of revolution hanging all over the place instead of the familiar Russian flag, and to find on the streets many officers, fortunately the non- fighting ones, with red ribbons or brassards. Many people welcomed the Revolution and when it came greeted it with smiling faces. Poor mortals, they did not realise what it really meant. I had frequent discussions with various groups, trying to enlighten them on the real meaning of what was happening, but nothing could change their minds. But just a few months later when the Bolsheviks came into power, those who had gone into ecstasy over the Revolution and raved over the long awaited “Freedom” were cursing themselves for having sup- ported the movement. During the first period of the Revolution the peo- ple had two songs, one a pzan of victory set to the music of the ‘““Marseillaise” and the other a funeral hymn which they sang to the tune of an old military funeral march. To any one who has lived through the Revolution and Bolshevist times there are few stronger impressions than the memory of these con- trasting songs, the one with its excesses of rejoicing, and the other with its ineradicable note of sadness and tragedy, multiplied tenfold by the ragged pro- cessions with the open caskets through the streets. In those days it was the fashion to wear a red bow or ribbon somewhere about your coat. However, I never wore anything red and therefore often brought upon myself the disapproval of people who believed that by wearing a red badge they were 4From Kieff to the Urals doing something very important for their country and were helping it out of the difficulties into which it had been plunged by the Tsarist regime. One day as I was walking along the main street in Kieff, I met a big procession consisting of men and women of all ages, professions, and conditions; of scholars and even of children. They carried, in addition to the usual red banners with their revolu- tionary mottoes, standards of blue and yellow, the national colours of the Ukraine, bearing inscriptions proclaiming the independence and self-determina- tion of its people. The procession halted near the monument of the Prime Minister Stolypin, who was murdered in 1911 by an anarchist in one of the Kieff theatres in the presence of the Emperor. The statue was decked with red ribbons, while the eyes of the Premier were bandaged with a dirty red rag; and there the crowd stood and sang revolutionary songs as a demonstration against all this Tsarist Minister stood for. As I stopped on the curb and watched for a while, some students approached me, asking in most irritating tones: “Comrade, why do you not take off your cap while the Revolutionary Anthem is being sung and also why is it that you do not wear a red ribbon, as every- one else does, to show your sympathy with the people and the Revolutionr” “As the long expected Freedom is now at last pro- claimed in Russia,” I responded, “I am just taking the opportunity of doing exactly what J please, and what I think right to do, and not what anybody else would like to impose upon me!” 5a Tha ? Tie. SUL GROe Ones PPPEEaDP PP epee a eR WHA: ee AEH TA A TEREETUEA TEES ESS CVEU HSL ADARY ELEN READ OD LEMME ETE TE Ceeeee ee HUBS EEE The White Devil of the Black Sea | At this answer, in which I used their own weapon, their beloved “Freedom,” they were perplexed and, not finding words to continue gracefully this awk- ward conversation, they withdrew and let me alone. The political atmosphere was everywhere becom- ing more and more electric. Every one was expect- ing something to happen, some serious change to take place in the political life of the country, as it was obvious that the Provisional Government could not remain in power. All the measures taken by the government were merely indulgences to the mob and catered to its lowest instincts. The situation being sO very nervous and critical, we decided not to re- main longer in Kieff away from all our relatives, where we could easily be cut off from the other mem- bers of our family owing to the disorder and chaos that reigned in the railway traffic. So in July we definitely left Kieff and went over to my mother- in-law’s estate near Moscow, a fine country place called “Ouzkoe.” The second part of the summer in the country among the members of my wife’s family passed rather quietly and smoothly. Towards the end of the summer all sorts of ominous rumours again began surcharging the air, every day more intensive, and suddenly, one of the last days of October, we discovered the telephone communication with Moscow was cut off and on the same night we heard the sound of gun and rifle shots from the city, only eight miles away. The tutor of my nephews, a young student, volunteered to walk to Moscow for reconnoitering purposes and also to visit my mother and my wife’s mother who were 6From Kieff to the Urals both living in the city. The local peasants warned us that the workmen of an ammunition factory only a mile away from our house proposed to raid the estate, search the house and inspect our documents. Not knowing exactly when they might come or what they really intended to do we organised a duty roster from among ourselves for every night. The total number of inhabitants of our house was fifteen, not counting the servants, of whom there were ten; but of these only two were men. Thus we had but six men who could be put down on the list for night duty. It was arranged that two, well armed, should be on patrol every night. The sound of the cannonade from Moscow still continued. In a day or two my nephews’ teacher returned and reported that fighting was going on ‘n the whole of the city between the Bolsheviks on one side and officers and cadets on the other; that it was impossible to say just at present who would get the upper hand as both sides were fighting cour- ageously and fiercely ; and that my mother, who had been joined by my two sisters with their families and my two brothers from Petrograd, was well and safe, but none of them could leave the house without tak- ing the risk of being killed in the streets. My wife’s mother was also well, but likewise forced to sit at home for the same reason. On the sixth day of the Moscow battle in the morn- ing while two of my wife's brothers were absent in a neighbouring village on business, my wife and I were peacefully sitting at home reading when sud- denly we heard a shot fired under our very windows. 7EAELER EOE VAUEATAEI VVOAHA SSO SFA LA UTED EA LOS PAH LOMA TSAO ULE eee ee TULA EEG iH a iu i J u ‘i a HH The White Devil of the Black Sea I looked out and found that the house was sur- rounded by workmen armed to the teeth. As I knew from experience what a Bolshevik search meant and also what would be the result of their finding firearms in the house, my first thought was to conceal my Winchester. My wife and I ran through the whole house, but could not find a satis- factory place to hide it until finally my eye fell on an old sofa, which was broken and out of use. With | a knife I cut open its cover, shoved the rifle in be- I tween the springs, and hastily sewed up the hole. | The Bolsheviks might have entered the house at any second, so this had to be an action of a few minutes. Then, having told my wife to remain in her room and having sent my orderly to her as protection in case of emergency, I went to negotiate with the be- siegers. On coming out of the house I saw that we were closely surrounded by proper Bolsheviks, so I promptly approached their leader and said: “Now, what is it you have come for?” “We have come,” he said, “to search your house and estate, as it has been reported to us that you are concealing a number of armed men of the counter- revolutionary force, and also a stock of firearms such as rifles, revolvers, and machine guns.” I smiled at the idea but authorised them to proceed with the search at once. They jumped at this op- portunity so unexpectedly offered them. However, they did not make a very minute search, were very polite and confiscated only two small rifles and three revolvers, among which was unfortunately my Browning. ‘Taking these away they declared that 8From Kieff to the Urals they wanted all rifle-barreled arms for fighting the government forces. They gave a receipt for each confiscated weapon and promised to return every- thing except the revolvers as soon as the Moscow fighting were over. They did not touch our sport- ing guns and promised to send us two more for our self-protection in the event of the house being at- tacked by irregular bands, which were numerous in the Moscow suburbs. They kept their promise and on the next day brought us, however incredible this may seem, two sporting guns. What was still more wonderful, after the Moscow battle, which lasted for eight days and nights and ended in a Bol- shevist victory, the rifles which were confiscated were also returned to us in perfect order together with the remaining rounds of ammunition; but they were careful enough to keep the revolvers, which was the cause of the following argument with the Bolsheviks that brought back the rifles. “T want my revolver back,” I said, “because I need it for self-defence.” “You may get it back,” replied the man in charge, ‘Gf you apply to the Moscow Soviet of the Work- men’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies, and this only on condition that you take an oath of loyalty to the Soviet Government in your future service.” “T have already taken an oath once before in which I swore to remain loyal to my Church, my Tsar, and my Country,” I responded. “As this was an oath for my life, I am therefore not in the least prepared to break that oath, which is sacred to me, by taking another one of loyalty to the gang of rascals that you 9POET MOREARSE ESTE DAES ES PR RET PAD EGEROEURU RO Me Reem cee n ean The White Devil of the Black Sea are, the whole lot of you, who are destroying the Church, and selling the Country after having de- posed our Tsar. On the contrary,” I proceeded, “I here and now declare that I make it an object of my life to fight your gang wherever and whenever I find an opportunity of doing so, so help me God!” In answer to my declaration, they threatened to bring me before the Revolutionary War Tribunal and make me take all the consequences such a trial would entail. From this day on I was registered and kept on their black list as a dangerous counter- revolutionary. In the meantime a frightful bloody terror had started in Moscow which resulted in the arrest and shooting of all the officers and bourgeois they could lay hands on. Not wanting to take the risk of stupidly being caught by the Bolsheviks and becoming a vic- tim of their terror, I at once decided to take my wife and change our residence from this Bolshevik- dominated Moscow to my native town of Orenburg, where in my opinion there was yet hope of organ- ising with the Orenburg Cossacks some sort of re- sistance to the waves of Bolshevism which by then were already sweeping over all Central Russia. With us came along my mother, one married sister with her husband and my youngest unmarried sister besides four servants who did not wish to part with us. It was with the utmost difficulty that we suc- ceeded in obtaining two small compartments in the train, into which all ten of us had to squeeze some- how. Our journey was to last four full days and nights. IOFrom Kieff to the Urals The first two days we travelled quite comfortably but on the third day at one of the stations our car- riage was besieged by a crowd of soldiers and sailors. There was one sailor who was particularly demon- strative and insolent, and introduced himself to us by yelling that all the bourgeois must have their necks twisted and be chucked out of the window. Our situation became rather serious. Knowing the na- ture of the beast, I decided to take the risk of trying a plan, which, if successful, would allow us at least to continue; if not, then God help us. I stood up and curtly addressed the noisy sailor. “Tnstead of shouting and creating disorder, you had better tell your comrades to keep quiet and come right into our compartments. It will be very diffi- cult but still we can squeeze ourselves up a little more, if you promise to make your comrades behave.” “That’s a bargain, comrade,” said he and, having quieted his companions, he pushed into our compart- ment and sat himself down on a travelling case beside me. Inasmuch as I was in mufti and thus gave him no indication that I was an officer, he began telling me quite freely about the number of officers he had murdered and how much property he had plundered. A wild fury was heaving my soul at hearing his bloodthirsty tales; and it was all I could do to keep myself from strangling the beast with my own hands as he boasted of the vile crimes he had committed. But what could two of us do, with eight women to look after, against so many of theme ‘The increas- ing fury within me against the Bolsheviks had reached its boiling point and I swore to myself to IlGOTH TE eee eee TERETOERESTRT TVS USSSA sec ASO CAA PO AS OOO EGO EAU EORGAOOSELEOO TERE APOA LAPT LAPT The White Devil of the Black Sea show them no mercy but to destroy them whenever and wherever I could, by all the means within my power. Thus we travelled to Orenburg without further incident. I2CHAPTER II BLOWING UP A VODKA FACTORY T the railway station we were met by the man in charge of our town house who informed us that only one small suite of three rooms was hab- itable at the moment, as the remainder of the house, which had been used as a hospital during the war, was being renovated. So we were obliged to sepa- rate, my wife and I going with my sister and her husband and all the servants to the Central Hotel, thus leaving my mother and my youngest sister in the house. The inhabitants of the town spoke little or not at all about Bolshevism, and had to be very guarded in what they said, as the military power in the town was in the hands of Colonel Dutoff, Ataman of the Orenburg Cossacks. The Cossacks who had re- mained at home were practically all heads of fami- lies and belonged to the military class that had not been mobilized during the war on account of age and consequently had not been infected with the plague of Bolshevism. This is why the local Bol- sheviks had to keep quiet. Even the fiercest of them were afraid to manifest themselves or to display their theories openly. ; During the first days of my sojourn in Orenburg I was closely following what was going on in the town 13The White Devil of the Black Sea and attentively listening to what was being said. It was important for me to learn all that I could of the ideas of the Cossacks, of their psychology in the midst of the mass of theories which were then spreading over Russia, and of their various interpre- tations of these, as well as of the actual state of their minds and their feeling toward the whole compli- cated problem. Another and most essential thing for me was to find out the basis on which the local military authorities were acting. It was necessary for me to gather all this information in order to orient myself accurately and satisfactorily. The administrative power was in the hands of a special committee called “The Committee for the Protection of the Country and the Revolution.” This committee consisted of five members, of whom four were Social-Revolutionaries and one a Com- munist. All five were Jews, and it was obvious that neither the Cossacks nor the civil population had any confidence in them or trusted them in any way. I attended several meetings of landowners, at which the chief matter under consideration was the question of organising special officers’ detachments or squadrons in order to protect private property from destruction and robbery, cases of which were becoming more and more frequent, by the returning deserters from the front who had entirely surren- dered themselves to their basest criminal instincts. It was the small landowners from among the peasant class who especially insisted upon the immediate formation of such detachments. The debate ended in favour of organising these and it was only a ques- 14Blowing Up a Vodka Factory tion of obtaining the sanction of Ataman Dutoff. This task was laid upon me. Although the consent of the committee of five was also necessary, I made up my mind, however, not to present to them any formal written application for their sanction but just to inform them of the organisation of these detachments post factum. In the event of their refusal, I decided to use pressure. The Ataman at once gave his sanc- tion, but directed me to go to the committee to obtain their consent as well. At the outset they sought to checkmate our plan. I then asked them: ‘Whom do you count upon in the event of a Bol- shevik advance from Samara or Tashkent?” They at once replied: “On you officers, of course “Tn that case,” I declared firmly, “when the Red Army does advance, all the officers will go and fight in the front line and will not think of defending you Social-Revolutionaries and your town.” They immediately became more conciliatory but expressed their fear that the formation of such ofh- cers’ detachments would remind the people too much of the old régime, and that this was not in con- formity with the ideas of the Social-Revolutionary party. Finally I became surfeited with their endless arguing and simply said: “I came to you not for a political debate but merely for a formal matter, to have your signatures attached to these documents. As to my conditions, you know them.” After a short consultation between themselves they signed. 15 }»?The White Devil of the Black Sea Now I had to form the detachments, provide the necessary equipment, arms, and ammunition and secure quarters for them. All this took me but a few days. I was placed at the head of one of the detach- ments numbering forty men, and obtained my moth- er’s consent to quarter them on our estate situated some sixty-five miles from the town. ‘There they could easily be provided with horses, rations, and forage. The area which we were to protect was a large one. ‘Taking our estate for the centre of our dis- trict, we controlled an area with a radius of about seventeen miles. he winter was exceedingly cold, and this fact would make the task of protecting such an area, situated in the open steppes, particularly dificult. I had received everything that was neces- sary for my squadron, this is: forty rifles, fifty thou- sand rounds of ammunition, forty winter coats, forty pairs of snow boots and eight trozkas, or teams of three horses, for our journey to quarters. All the men had their own revolvers, so these did not have to be provided. On the eve of our departure I assembled my squadron at the barracks in order to give them my last instructions and to work out the details of our future course of action. Having done with business we peacefully sat down to tea and were regaling our- selves with less weighty matters than politics and fighting which was a real treat in those times when, unfortunately, we were suddenly disturbed by the entrance of a Cossack who handed me a letter from the Ataman which contained: 16Blowing Up a Vodka Factory 1. An order to disband the squadron, and for all the chiefs and commanding officers to report to the Ataman the next morning to discuss the situation created by the portentous news of the advance from Samara of a Bolshevik force estimated at over 20,000 men; 2. An order for all the officers to remain in town and to be prepared for despatch to the front line. The following morning when we reported to the Ataman, he informed us that he had received a wire from the Commander-in-Chief of the Bolshevik forces, proposing that he surrender the town of Orenburg without fighting and promising in return safety and immunity for the Cossacks and their insti- tutions. He asked what we thought of it. We replied unanimously that we would rather fight than surrender to Bolsheviks, as we all knew from experi- ence that they could not be trusted; for on many occasions, in spite of their promises of inviolability, they had not hesitated to murder or to torture people to death. On verifying the lists of registered officers and cadets, it was discovered that only a thousand to twelve hundred men could carry arms. The mobili- sation began the same day and on the following morning a battalion of four hundred men started out to occupy the fighting line between Orenburg and Samara; and within a week everybody in the town who was in condition to fight had been mobilised and sent to the front. The state of our men in the line was deplorable. The weather was terrible with the temperature more than 15 degrees below zero ac- 17The White Devil of the Black Sea companied by strong wind and snow. Complete absence of fortification and trenches was a heavy handicap, but the chief difficulty was that we had no artillery at all, whereas the Bolsheviks possessed a considerable number of both light and field guns. I was not allowed to go to the front but was appointed commander of a Cossack cavalry detach- ment, which was to remain in the town to protect the civil population and to maintain order, as the local Bolsheviks, immediately upon the receipt of the news of the approach of the Red Army, combined with those in some of the neighbouring villages to make demonstrations and create disturbances. Moreover, there was a particularly dangerous ele- ment in the members of an infantry regiment of deserters who had murdered all their officers at the front and returned to Orenburg. The Samara Bol- sheviks had allowed them to proceed to Orenburg as they found them thoroughly imbued with the Bol- shevist ideas and procedure. The Samara lot figured that this regiment would undermine the defence from the inside while fighting would possibly still be going on at the front. Because of all this the situation in the town was becoming more and more threatening. In the night time, gangs of armed men began prowling in the streets and cases of robbery and murder became fre- quent. Patrols from among the inhabitants of each house had to remain on watch at night. Thus at the hotel where we were staying I was chosen head of the guard and sat up every night together with ten other clients in one of the rooms of the hotel, where 18Blowing Up a Vodka Factory we were subject to immediate call by our patrol. This was, of course, only when I was free from my other duties as commander of the Cossacks and was not sent anywhere to restore order. Fifty men of my detachment were always on duty with horses under saddle to proceed at a minute’s notice to wherever they might be wanted. During the day all was more or less quiet and my wife and I with my youngest sister often spent our spare time wandering about the town, especially in the Tartar quarter, which was by far the most inter- esting and fascinating section. During those excur- sions we several times visited my old friend, the Tar- tar horse dealer, who was quite a wealthy man and always received us very courteously, entertaining us with fine teas and delicious Asiatic sweets. One night I was hurriedly summoned to the Ata- man’s headquarters where he gave me orders to pro- ceed at once with a sotnia, a squad of a hundred mounted Cossacks, to the Government Wine and Spirit Depot which, it appears, was being stormed by the infantry regiment of deserters. The soldiers were breaking into the building to get at the spirit, of which there was a supply equal to about 20,000,000 bottles, stored in vats, drums and other containers. Most of the spirit was go per cent pure alcohol and was being held for mixing with water and flavouring to make the vodka of commerce that contained roughly 45 per cent of alcohol. The depot was situated on the bank of the Ural River on a large open square. 19: eee The White Devil of the Black Sea In less than five minutes I had started out with my sotnia. f\s soon as we arrived on the spot, we were met by several rifle volleys from within the depot. I ordered the Cossacks to dismount and open fire, while I ran into a house near by and called the Ata- man on the telephone, described the situation to him and asked for his instructions in view of the pugna- cious attitude of the soldiers, who had by this time occupied all the buildings of the depot. The Ata- man gave me full power to act at my own discretion and did not care what happened as long as the mutiny was suppressed and an end put to the drunken orgy. Given this free hand, I ordered ten Cossacks under the command of a sergeant to dig in and keep up the rifle fire on the depot from the front while I led the remaining ninety through roundabout streets towards the river side of the depot, from where we charged the place with wild Cossack cries but with- out firing a single shot. This rush was so unexpected that we succeeded in getting right inside and in dis- arming the whole regiment of two thousand men, who were so thoroughly intoxicated that they did not realise the character of our ruse nor have time to offer any concerted resistance. We escorted the whole gang of drunken ruffians to one of the regi- mental barracks, where I placed a platoon of Cos- sacks with a machine gun to keep an eye on them. When I came back to the depot I was struck by what I saw. ‘The whole place was simply swarming with a crowd of people of every description and every one of them, male and female, under-aged and 20Blowing Up a Vodka Factory adult, carried some sort of receptacle, pail, bottle, glass, pitcher or tea-pot. With a greedy fury they were breaking the barrels containing the spirit and were drinking this nearly pure alcohol; then, having satisfied their thirst, were filling their receptacles to carry them back for a stock at home. Among the crowd one could see people of all classes and ages from the old men of eighty down to youngsters of only eight and ten. It was frightful to see the drunken children, who, having tasted the terrible liquor, collapsed on the spot and went off to sleep on the snow. Any number of people, adults and chil- dren, had their limbs frozen during their drunken sleep in the cold. Some of them lost their hands, others had their faces frozen so that they looked more like turnips, with no trace of eyes or nose or any other of the attributes of a human face. A great number of them were frozen to death. From the very beginning, the Cossacks were busy breaking the barrels and I gave strict orders to open the taps or break the pipes to let all the wine flow into the Ural River, and thus hasten the end of this unheard-of mass intoxication. But the crowds in their alcoholic rage had discovered a few unemptied barrels in an out-of-the-way cellar and had drained them. As the spirit which was let out through the taps and pipes ran into the river by a ditch, the peo- ple filled their crockery from this rivulet with a filthy liquid which was a mixture of wine, earth, dirt and other contamination which happened to be at the bottom of It. The only alternative I saw was to blow up the 21The White Devil of the Black Sea remaining vats and set fire to the flowing spirit. But before that it was essential to clear the place of the crowd in order to avoid any casualties resulting from the explosion; but this proved itself to be an even more difficult task than the capture of the armed soldiers. Just at that moment I received an order to pro- ceed with twenty Cossacks to a fire that had broken out in the building of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, which, though in flames, was being ran- sacked by the mob. So I immediately hurried to the spot and cleared the mob by means of nagatkas, or Cossack whips. One man had to be shot because he resisted and wounded one of my men with a revolver. As the Singer Building was exactly opposite the hotel where my wife was staying, I took the oppor- tunity to go across and see her. I found her in a desperate state and besought her to go at once over to live with my mother in our house, as that part of the town was much quieter. I sent her off under escort of five Cossacks, and went back to the wine depot. When I returned, I tried to persuade the crowd to disperse, but in answer to my request several revolver shots were fired which resulted in the kill- ing of one Cossack and the wounding of two others. Then I concentrated my men at the farther end of the place and ordered them to fire a volley over the heads of the crowd. We heard cries and more re- volver shots but the crowd still refused to move. [ was beginning to lose patience and, having given my second in command orders to patrol the town with 22Blowing Up a Vodka Factory fifty Cossacks in order to stop all people in posses- sion of spirit in the streets and to destroy it on the spot and in case of resistance to use their arms, I charged the crowd with whips. This time they used not only revolvers but also attacked us with knives and stones. Again several Cossacks and horses were stabbed or wounded. As it was impossible for me to sacrifice any more of my men in this way, l placed two machine guns at one of the angles of the square and fired two rounds from each, and immediately after- wards charged them again, but this time with drawn swords. The Cossacks were in a rage against the people for having killed and wounded several of their fellows, and cut into the crowd with fury. The result of that attack was that the crowd was at last dispersed, after having paid for their greed of drink with fifteen killed and over sixty wounded. Ajter having thus cleared the place and cared for the wounded, I immediately put pyroxylin under the vats and reported by ’phone to the Ataman that I was going to blow up the depot. The Ataman replied that he was himself arriving on the spot at once. It was close upon twelve o’clock of the second night we had wasted over this affair that we set fire to the fuses. ‘The weather was very fine and the air frosty and still. The snow under a brilliant moon made a wonderful setting. The place was sur- rounded by three hundred Cossacks who were pressed by the threatening mob, which was again collecting round the place. It seemed that the peo- ple were prepared to give up everything, even their 23aoa, The White Devil of the Black Sea lives, just for a glass of spirit; whips, swords and even machine guns could not stop them! The sight of the explosion was wonderful. It was something quite fairy-like. First crimson, then yel- low and blue flames sprang high up in the air in a solid column which spread at the top and came down like a fountain of thousands of little blue tongues of flame of the burning drops of spirit, while round the blazing depot flaming rivers were streaming on the surface of the spotless white snow burning their way like molten iron from a blast furnace and meet- ing again down on the ice of the Ural River. Soon the whole surface of the frozen stream was ablaze with these bluish-yellow flames and the frost cov- ered trees on the farther bank were aglow with an uncanny, almost miraculous light. The crowd which was watching the magnificent sight, on seeing that such an enormous quantity of alcohol was being destroyed, pressed harder and harder until it finally broke through the line of resisting Cossacks and again rushed towards the blazing depot. As far as I could make out, there still remained eight vats full of the spirit. I then rode up to the Ataman who was still there on horseback, pointing out to him, that in the event of the cisterns begin- ning to explode, the casualties would be counted in thousands. He readily saw that a catastrophe was imminent unless drastic measures were at once taken to remove the crowd. So he ordered us to clear the place, whatever this might necessitate, be it swords, rifles or machine guns; but that the place must be 24Blowing Up a Vedka Factory cleared at any cost of that crowd of demented humanity. As I was standing beside the Ataman, a tchinovnik or Government official, aged about sixty, was passing close by, carrying in his hand a kettle. Seeing his purpose, the Ataman set his horse square across the man’s path, saying to him: “You go straight back from where you came!” In answer to this the man drew a revolver, but before he had time to pull the trigger he was shot dead by the Ataman himself. Turning my horse round to go and carry out the orders of the Ataman, I caught sight of a fellow who was preparing to fire at him from behind. I drew my sword and, before he could fire, severed his arm clean at the elbow, so the bullet struck the ground. Then began a real battle. For two hours we were clearing the blazing depot of those raving, crazed human beings. It was absolute hell! The people were completely off their heads. They threw themselves flat on their stomachs and thus consumed the burning liquid. The explosions of the eight cis- terns followed consecutively one after the other at a period of fifteen to twenty minutes. It was impos- sible to establish how many people perished under the ruins, how many were burnt alive in the spirit and how many were killed during the fighting; but afterwards the report showed that well over three hundred had been burned, killed or wounded. Among the Cossacks were seven killed and sixteen wounded. It was almost daylight when we were relieved by a fresh sotnia and were allowed to go and rest; but 25The White Devil of the Black Sea the hour of rest was not a long one. At eleven o’clock in the morning I was again called by tele- phone to the wretched wine depot, as the indefati- gable crowd was once more gathering around it. I saddled my horse and went off and found that this is what had happened. Between the depot and the river there was a well. Part of the spirit which had been drawn off from some of the vats through the taps had drained into the well. When the people discovered this, they took advantage of the fact that this heaven-sent cistern was in an out of the way place and immediately started by means of ropes and pails filling their bottles, cans, etc., with the mucky but still intoxicating liquid. What is more, they started a new game: being out of sight, they loaded barrels and buckets on horse sledges and carted away large quantities of the cursed beverage. I ordered all these auxiliary implements destroyed on the spot; and the crowd, scared by our nagatkas, dispersed without further trouble. In order finally to be rid of this ghastly business I had my men gather and pour into this well, at a time when the crowd could see them, several barrels of pig-swill and felt that we had at last beaten them. 26CHAPTER: Pt TRAPPED BY DESERTERS N my way home I was anticipating with delight a good night’s rest. But unfortunately this was not to be; for late in the evening I was again called to headquarters and in company with the chief of the municipal militia, a fierce Caucasian of Georgian nationality, one Mr. Gambashidze, and three district superintendents, was dispatched to one of the hotels in the vicinity of the wine depot, where it was re- ported a tremendous bacchanalia was in progress and a murder had been committed. We anticipated an ambuscade and therefore took care to arm ourselves well before we started off in our motor car. The thermometer was about twenty- five degrees below zero but fortunately there was no wind. To get to our destination we had to pass by the wine depot again. Here, around the line of Cos- sacks, crowds of people still continued to knock about, waiting in expectation that the military force would either be removed, or that the Cossacks would not be sufficiently alert to prevent the crowd from getting at the remaining wine. As we were crossing the place we were fired upon and returned a few shots without stopping our car. Happily none of us was hit. Only one bullet touched one of the wheels. 27———— — The White Devil of the Black Sea The hotel which was the object of our trip was situated on a rather large open place that was lighted with two huge electric lights. At first sight every- thing within the building seemed to be peaceful and quiet and quite dark. We entered the courtyard, after having left two men outside the gates. ‘The proprietor, whom we found hidden in a dark corner of his pigsty, admitted that a murder had been com- mitted in the top story; that the culprit was hiding at the top of the stairs; and that as soon as any one attempted to go up, he at once opened fire with a revolver. There were two means of egress from the upper story: one was the main staircase with an opening into the place; the other a fire escape descending into the courtyard. We went up the main staircase and began thumping at the door. At first the murderer replied with revolver shots; but, after discovering that he had to do with Cos- sacks and official people, he dashed off towards the back stairs where he encountered one of our men and the proprietor, who had recovered from his fright at our arrival. Then, seeing that there was no escape for him that way, he again bolted into the building, began firing his revolver through the window and threatened to throw a hand grenade. Then I decided to smoke him out by aruse. I ran into the yard and in a very loud voice shouted to my men to hurry to the main staircase in order to break the culprit’s door open and force their way into his hiding place. All the men rushed to the stairs and made a terrific noise at the door, while I remained 28Trapped by Deserters in a dark corner of the courtyard. At the very first blows on the door, the murderer looked out of the window and, having made sure that there was no one outside, jumped out on the top landing of the fire escape holding his revolver ready to fire. This was all I was waiting for. I threw up my Winchester and fired, aiming at his leg. He came down, rolling head over heels and remained motionless. But as I approached him, he managed to fire his revolver and thus succeeded in blowing off my papakha, the big | fur busby of the Cossacks. In self-defence I was obliged to use the butt end of my rifle on him before disarming him and tying him up with a rope. The murderer happened to be one of the infantry regiment deserters; his victim was a Cossack officer who had several times been wounded at the German front, and whom the murderer killed with premedi- tation, intending to commit a robbery. Having thus captured the scoundrel, we proceeded to search the building and its annexes in the yard, which had numerous dark corners, cellars and sheds. At first all these buildings appeared to be empty, but finally we heard the voice of one of the Militia Superintendents calling us from some underground refuge. We hurried in the direction of the sound and went down through a hatch into an underground passage- way. There below we discovered a party of eighteen men playing cards and drinking. The place was dimly lighted by a few small candle ends. All the men were so drunk or so absorbed in the game that they were unaware of our presence during the first 29The White Devil of the Black Sea few seconds and, when they came to realise that we were there, it was already too late as our revolvers were pointed at them. We looked through their documents, which proved that all of them had quite recently arrived from Samara. The documents bore the signature of a certain Kobizeff, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Bolshevik forces ad- vancing towards Orenburg. Apparently they were some of the numerous clandestine agents whom the Bolsheviks had sent to our town to reinforce the local organisations, whose problem was to start an insur- rection at the approach of the Red forces and thus from the rear strike a decisive and a telling blow at the Cossacks, defenders of their native land and families. We disarmed the party and took them out into the yard where the bitter cold soon sobered them, as they began to protest loudly and make a defence for them- selves. I was obliged to order “Hands up” and have the Cossacks rope each separately under the threat of a revolver muzzle. Just that moment we heard the spit of rifles at a short distance and the singing of bullets over our heads or the sound of their penetrating the wooden fence which was the only barrier between ourselves and the open square. We were frankly perplexed and I went outside the gates to find the answer but came back quicker than I went, as I was literally spattered by a rain of bullets. My coat was shot through in two places. What had happened was this. It appears that one of our prisoners had had the pluck and cunning to escape and to inform a 30 PTTL ET TE TTRET ERATOR EARLS ADELE TEES EET OSTU PLOT TRO ES OURS TED ETTrapped by Deserters Cossack sotnia, which had that same day returned from the German front and was quartered dcross the open place exactly opposite the hotel, that arrests of prominent Bolsheviks were about to be made by us. As that sotnia had become entirely Bolshevik, they very naturally decided to assist their pals and so had opened fire on us. At that moment one of our men cried: “Took out. They are training machine guns on us!” I looked through the fence and saw that the Cos- sacks had placed one of those deadly weapons on the steps of the house and were just fixing a belt in it. I ran my rifle through a hole in the fence and drew on the gunner. As he dropped, another man at once took his place and fired a few rounds; but he also followed his companion. Just then I suddenly heard the throb of a motor car and to my surprise saw all three of our mates, the Militia Superintendents, driving away as fast as the engine could take them. So there we were, Gam- bashidze and myself, alone inside the yard, guarding eighteen prisoners with arms tied and confronted with about one hundred well-armed deserters watch- ing us from across the place and ready at any moment to fire upon us. Our only protection was the thin wooden fence and closed gates, through which bul- lets penetrated as easily as they would through paper or glass. Our position was anything but enviable, but there it was and something had to be done. No- body could help us, so we had to help ourselves. But how? 31SN The White Devil of the Black Sea The impetus came from Gambashidze. ‘Look here,” he said, ‘“‘we can’t go on sitting here for ages, without making some sort of attempt to escape one way or the other.” “YT quite agree with you in this wise discovery of yours, old man,” said J, “but what are we to do?” “You let metry. Ill open the gates and see what's doing the other side, across the road. Just you wait,” and before I had time to utter a word, Gambashidze slipped through the gates, but he slipped back again, just as rapidly as I had before him. “No,” he said, “if we are to get out of this scrape at all, we shall certainly not do it that way. See here, I’ve already one bullet through the leg, and my polushubok (winter coat) looks like a piece of fish net from their blasted machine gun. So we must think of something better than that!” Then a thought struck me. “T say, what if I tell our prisoners to shout for all they’re worth at their comrades across the road that they have been released by us and now want to come out and join them, and ask them to cease firingr Then you and I can easily follow close behind them with our revolvers all ready to fire in case they offer to turn on us. Then once we are outside, with eighteen prisoners as a barricade, we might easily bolt into the narrow street close by on the right and escape round the first corner to the right or left. What do you think? It seems worth risking, any- how!” Gambashidze was silent for a moment and then said: 32Trapped by Deserters “That would be easy enough if we keep cool and are quick about it; but remember that each of us must look after himself. If we manage to keep together, all well and good; if we get separated, let’s not worry about the other fellow but each of us try to save his own soul. After all, in such a fix as we are in, all roads lead home.” “Yes and quick too—We will not neglect any short cuts,” said I. ‘So it’s fixed, is itr” “Yes, and let’s do it at once, if only we succeed in | persuading our prisoners to communicate with their comrades.” At this his Caucasian features took on an expres- sion of firmness and determination to cope with any situation Fate might choose to put before him. 5o we told our prisoners that we would set them free if they would shout the message to their brethren over the way. As they consented we untied them. They opened the gates and began waving a piece of white cloth to their comrades who ceased fire. Gamba- shidze and I followed immediately behind with drawn revolvers, slightly bent, so that our heads should not be seen from across the place. Those few minutes were very thrilling and my heart was nearly jumping out of my chest with excitement. As we came up to a small street on the right we both sprang to one side without a sound, so that our former prisoners and now protectors, as Fate would have it, being themselves in a nervous state under the persistent eye of the machine gun, did not notice our disappearance. We ran sharply round the corner, took the next 33Se = The White Devil of the Black Sea turn to the left, and were then out of sight and safe. At this moment, I remembered with a chuckle of joy that I had kept all the prisoners’ documents which we had taken from them during the search, and which they, in their excitement, had forgotten to ask for. Gambashidze and I ran direct to the nearest Police Station from which I telephoned for two hun- dred mounted Cossacks who arrived in a few min- utes. I took the column direct to the headquarters of the soldiers who, less than one hour ago, had been firing at us. Our approach was unexpected so that we easily disarmed them and sent the lot under escort to a very strongly guarded barrack. With them we also arrested ten of our eighteen prisoner-protectors. During this scrap our casualties were five Cossacks stabbed with knives. Having done with this business, I at last returned home tired, hungry, and nervously distraught. After so many disturbed days and nights it was the first time that I was able to sit down quietly to dinner which was prepared for me in no time by my mother, wife and sister in spite of the late hour. To com- plete the celebration I had a real bath and peacefully went to bed. That night I had the feeling that if any one waked me, whatever the reason, I would tell him to go to the warm country and stay there, but that J was not going anywhere. As luck would have it the night passed quietly and I had a real night’s rest. During the last few days we had been awaiting the arrival from Moscow of my brother and my servant, 34Trapped by Deserters who was to bring me cash. We were extremely anxious about them, as we hadn’t the slightest idea whether they could pass the Bolshevik lines. One day a report came from the front line that the Bolsheviks had been driven back as far as Samara, a distance about two hundred seventy miles, by our small but valiant Cossack army. At that splendid news every one heaved a sigh of relief; but unfortu- nately, my enjoyment of the news was marred by the fact that I had to continue struggling with that ill- fated well near the spirit depot. Incredible as it may seem, the people, even after the pollution we had effected, continued to draw up the cursed fluid and purify it by leaving the receptacles for a while in the sharp cold saying as they saw the spirit rise to the top and the rest frozen solid: “It is God who has purified it for us!” I remember a very strange but a very disagreeable incident that occurred during one of these trips to the everlasting well. One day somewhere about three o’clock in the afternoon I was informed that several sleighs from a neighbouring village had come to the well to fetch some of the poisonous stuff. Calling twenty Cossacks I immediately rode to the spot. On approaching we noticed that the peasants had already filled the barrels and had crossed the river intending to cart away the liquid to their vil- lage. We pursued them across the ice to stop them and empty their barrels on the snow. The idiots did not understand that it was real poison and that consuming it would be the surest way of con- tracting either cholera or typhoid fever. 35 TTT ONGRAS TROD aka- a The White Devil of the Black Sea As I came to about the middle of the river, an old man threw a thick iron bar in between my horse’s legs. The horse stumbled, slipped on the ice, and fell on its side bringing me down with it. In falling I struck my head on a sharp piece of ice and cut my ear badly. As I sat up, I noticed that the same old man was rushing at me with a wicked-looking weapon made of a ten-pound scale weight fastened to the end of a strap. I drew my big Colt and fired at a distance of about five yards. The bullet struck him square in the middle of the forehead. One may imagine my terror when I saw that the man only shook his head and, having taken his hat off, started to wash his blood-stained brow with snow. It was a marvel that he did not fall. I presume the bullet was deflected by the skull and followed round just near the skin until it came out behind, as is some- times the case. Even so, the old man must have had a tremendously heavy frontal piece to have deflected a Colt at five yards. The following day I saw him with a bandage on his head busy cutting ice on the river! When I had finished losing time over this incident of our two heads, I noticed that the peasants on the further bank had pulled one of the Cossacks off his horse and were beating him. JI at once rode to his assistance and with the help of another Cossack, saved our companion who was being badly knocked about, though the peasants had had time to take pretty severe revenge on him for the loss of their drinks. After we had emptied all the barrels, we 36Trapped by Deserters laid the wounded man on one of the sledges, and forced a peasant to take him back to the barracks. The next morning news came to headquarters that the Bolshevik forces had blown up all the railway bridges on their retreat to Samara and that a shock- ing thing had occurred. A passenger train was due to leave Samara for Orenburg soon after. The Bol- sheviks there informed the train officials that the line was free and that the train could safely proceed, but they intentionally omitted to mention anything about the blown up bridges. The train went in the evening and travelled at its usual speed, the engine driver having no knowledge of the existing danger. Having covered a distance of only about twenty miles, the train arrived at the first destroyed bridge and naturally made a terrible plunge down the em- bankment and burst into flames. Many passengers were killed and wounded. One hour after the disaster another train from Samara arrived on the scene. But this train was a special, consisting of only three trucks, and stopped a safe distance from the burning train. A laughing crowd of sailors descended from the trucks and submitted the passengers of the unfortunate train to the most unimaginable cruelties. After they had killed those remaining alive and robbed all, they carried the bodies to a small station across the frozen river, put them in trucks coupled to a live engine without a driver and then opened the throttle and jumped, leaving the lifeless train to make its way into Oren- burg. It did not, however, reach our town, as the 37The White Devil of the Black Sea steam gave out, leaving it in the middle of the steppes to be found by our reconnoitering parties. All this terrible tragedy of unthinkable cruelty was related to me by a Colonel who was saved through a miracle of physical endurance, for he was still alive when the train was found by our Cossacks. Fle was travelling in plain clothes with the quite peaceful intention of visiting his family in Orenburg, whom he had not seen for three years, When the sailors pulled him out from under the debris of the train, wounded and bruised, one of the wretches recognised him and shouted to his pals: “Eley, comrades, here’s Colonel N., who is ob- viously attempting to join Dutoff to fight us!” Fle was beaten on the face with a whip until his cheeks were literally torn off and his teeth and jaws exposed. When he finally lost consciousness, the brutes put some salt on the wounds, tied his face up with rags and fastened his hands behind his back so that he could not take off that terrible bandage. He ended his fearful story to me by saying: “It is a wonder I did not go mad from the inde- scribable sufferings those beasts made me go through! There is certainly one thing I am determined about now, and this is that, although I was coming here with no thought of fighting the Bolsheviks, now I swear that, as soon as I am recovered, I will avenge myself on them with such merciless retaliation, as even they could not dream!” At the news of the tragedy I was terrified by the idea that my brother might happen to have been among the passengers. 38Trapped by Deserters When the train with the corpses was brought to Orenburg, all the victims were put in the hospital morgue, and J at once hurried there, very much upset by the fear of finding my brother among them. On arriving at the morgue I enquired for the names of the victims; but they were unidentified so I had to look at the faces and, thank God, found my brother was not there, which was a tremendous relief. In the evening I was again summoned to the damnable spirit well, and I was so tired of that game, that I decided to have done with it for ever, and that’s what I did. I gave orders to the Cossack platoon which was coming with me to take with them all that was necessary to blow it up, and on arrival, | first dispersed the crowd which was still around It, and then dynamited the well and a good portion of the earth near it. Thus terminated the “spirit phase” of my Orenburg experiences and the people’s drink- ing craze, which involved so many calamities and deaths, and wasted so much of our time and nervous energy. 39CHAP TER TY CHARGING WINDMILLS NE morning a deputation of peasants from our estate came to me and invited us to come and occupy our house, guaranteeing our absolute safety and even promising to guard us. The invitation lost some of its impressiveness in view of the fact that they all were drunk from the spirit which they had taken out of the stock in our distillery. According to them this is what had happened on our estate where we had stored over 4,000,000 gallons of spirit. This stock had been sealed by the Govern- ment in 1914, when the general mobilisation was pro- claimed in Russia and the sale of vodka prohibited. Now the peasants, in my opinion very wisely, dis- posed of that spirit. The facts were that they had no seed grain and the Bolshevik Government would not sell to the peasants individually, but only whole- sale to communities. The peasants, knowing what a difficult task it was to collect money from the com- munity as a whole, solved the question by breaking the Government seals on the wine and began to sell it to any purchaser at a price of forty kopecks a bottle. Thus in less than six weeks the peasants were in posses::on of over 600,000 roubles cash which, ac- cording to the cost of grain in those days, was a sum very much in excess of what they required for pur- 40Charging Windmills chasing their seed grain. Not knowing that the spirit had already been sold by us to the Government the year proceeding the war and that we received from the Government almost the total value of it, the deputation addressed me in the following words: “Well, we have done away with your wine spirit. Thanks very much. And now the community has decided to let you have 200 bottles, that you should not be too greatly disappointed at the news that the main stock does not exist any longer; and to-morrow those two hundred bottles will be brought here for you to dispose of in the way you find most agreeable.” It was astonishing that during all those weeks of drunkenness none of our property was touched by the peasants; but that, on the contrary, it was they who undertook to protect it and every day selected from among their number a guard of some twenty men who were strictly forbidden to drink wine while on duty. During all that period there was only one serious casualty, the killing of an old peasant who insisted that the spirit still belonged to us, the owners of the estate, and remonstrated with them for selling other people’s property. At the time of the peasants’ visit several days had passed without any incident worth recording. But this did not continue. One night I was again urgently summoned by the Ataman who said: “Took here, I am informed that to-night at ten o’clock a meeting will be held by the Bolsheviks in one of the windmills on the northern outskirts of the town. At this meeting they will discuss the details of the insurrection they are planning in the town, 41The White Devil of the Black Sea and afterwards they will distribute firearms for the occasion to the participants. So you take your Cos- sacks and round up all the Bolsheviks and confiscate their weapons.” This new raid appealed to me as one worth doing and interesting in the bargain, since it involved a bit of risk under rather simple but sporting conditions. Action had to be taken very carefully and cleverly, as there were about forty mills on the outskirts of the town and we did not know exactly in which of these the meeting was to be held. Besides we had no in- formation whatever as to the number who would attend. Also I feared to take too large a group of Cossacks, because this might scare the Bolsheviks and cause them to postpone the meeting until another day. On the other hand, if our party were too small, we might fall into an ambuscade, where one never knows what may happen. Considering all this, I took only twenty-five Cos- sacks with me. As a number of Bolshevik agents were closely following our movements, before start- ing I drew up the squad and loudly announced that we were going out of town to one of the villages where there was trouble to try and restore order; and that, as the village was eight to ten miles south of the town, we would not be back before noon of the following day. We left the town by the southern bridge and rode all the way round the city, in order to approach the mills from the north. This manceuvring was entirely successful so that we concealed ourselves un- noticed in the yard of a convent on the edge of the 42Charging Windmills open terrain on which all the mills were situated. Having left our rifles and swords with the horses in the courtyard to avoid attracting attention, a party of eight of us walked towards the mills and kept our ears open to hear what the people around us were saying and thus tried to find out exactly in which of the numerous mills the proposed meeting was to be held. An hour later we noticed that people were gathering in the largest mill which occupied a central position among the others. They were assembling cautiously one by one and seemed to be of rather doubtful appearance. I returned to the convent and told the others to be ready. From the yard we could easily observe in the bright moonlight everything that was happening near the mill. We waited half an hour after the last man had gone in and then I sent out six men to cap- ture the Bolshevik sentries which I figured would be posted in an outer circle to signal to their com- panions at the mill in the event of the approach of a military force, or of danger of any kind. In a short time the Cossacks came back with four captives whom I first questioned and then tied up. Now came the decisive moment for action. There was only one way of doing it and this was to storm the mill. The questioning of the Bolshevik sentries showed that there were about twenty men at the meeting. I concealed fifteen of my men behind various mills to catch any Bolsheviks that might attempt to get away and also to stop any who might come from outside to give a hand to their fellows in the mill if the scrap should develop into a noisy one. 43ee = + needed nee _ The White Devil of the Black Sea With the other ten I carefully surrounded the place. This accomplished, the Sergeant and I came up to the door and knocked. The mill was dark and every- thing was silent. The moment was thrilling. We thumped on the door for about five minutes without result and, though we stood close up to the door, we could not hear a sound from the inside. Tired of this game, I ordered the Sergeant to break the door open. I just had the time to utter these words, when a volley was fired from within. My Sergeant fell with a cry: “Oh, they’ve killed me, quite killed me!” My papakha was blown off and I felt a stinging pain at the top of my head. Three more volleys were fired. I succeeded in crawling over to the Sergeant who was rolling about in the snow and pulled him away from in front of the door. Then we examined our wounds, to find that the Sergeant was shot through the shoulder but no bones were touched, and that I had only an insignificant scratch at the top of my head, so slight, that there was even no trace of blood, and I might as well call it a bruise. That was all the harm the Bolsheviks did us this time. I bandaged the Sergeant’s shoulder and he, realising that he was still alive, became quite cheerful again and started threatening the aggressors in the mill. We now crawled up to one of the windows and, leaning against the wall on either side of it so that the bullets from inside could not hit us, we succeeded with the butt of our rifles in smashing the shutters and glass of the window and thus making an opening into the mill. 44Charging Windmills Now the shots were coming like rain from every- where, and from the top of the mill some one was screaming: “Help! they are killing us, robbing us!” As a matter of fact we had not yet fired a single shot, whereas the Bolsheviks had kept up a steady fusillade. Three Cossacks were wounded seriously and two slightly. One of our sentries rushed up and reported that there were armed people coming from all sides and threatening the Cossacks, There was no time to be lost, so I ran to the horses, jumped into the saddle and, holding a hand grenade, rode up to the mill and stopped behind a protecting corner. The firing from within was still continuing at short intervals. I chose an auspicious moment during a lull in the fusillade and, cantering past the smashed window, threw the bomb inside without stopping my horse. In about half a minute, I heard the detonation. When I turned back, I saw that half of the mill had been wrecked. Then with twelve Cossacks I sprang into what remained of the build- ing, ordering the remaining troopers to hold up the crowd, which by this time had already gathered, and not to hesitate to fire if they could not be otherwise kept back. Our first thought was to rescue the wounded from the mill and to extinguish the fire started by the explosion. This we soon controlled by means of snow. Of the sixteen Bolsheviks at the meeting two were killed and seven wounded. Inside the mill we found five boxes containing rifles, revolvers and even two Lewis guns. All the Bolsheviks were taken to the Convent yard 45The White Devil of the Black Sea where they were searched and left in charge of five Cossacks, while I returned to the Cossacks around the mill who were already engaged in a scrap with Bolsheviks who were hurrying to the spot from the town. I ordered them to cease firing and charge the crowd which could not resist the attack and ran for their lives, leaving two of their number killed. We lost one Cossack, shot with a revolver. All this took place in less than two hours and a half. The next morning it was reported to headquarters that the Bolsheviks had again commenced their ad- vance from Samara, and that this time their army numbered twenty-six thousand men. Their principal hope and support were three thousand sailors of the Baltic fleet who were already well known for their fierceness and savagery and were called by the Bolsheviks “The Beauty and the Glory of the Revolution.” Inspired by all this encouraging news, the local Bolsheviks were becoming every day more and more aggressive, and consequently we Cossacks had more and more work on our hands. One night when I had to go out on some business, I noticed some one in an enormous fur coat, walking directly in front of me. I had only passed the mys- terious figure by ten or fifteen yards when I heard a revolver shot and jumped quickly round with my Colt ready to fire. A voice that seemed strangely familiar came from the depths of the fur coat. What was my astonishment when I recognised the man as a priest from one of the local churches, who had 46Charging Windmills taken his turn of night duty and for that purpose had been given a revolver. “Father deacon!” I cried, “what on earth are you firing fore” “Oh!” said he, showing me the revolver, “for God’s sake don’t be frightened, child. I never carried such a thing before in my life and so as to get more familiar with it, I occasionally fire while 1 wander about the streets on night duty, to cheer me up and frighten the wicked!” I laughed at this man of the spirit and walked on. During these days I was instructed to search as carefully and as energetically as possible the houses in the west end of the town, which was simply swamped with Bolsheviks in possession of firearms, and to arrest those who could not produce a permit for carrying these. This job was extremely tiring and harassing as it always had to be done at night and many people had to be shot for resisting and firing at us. The danger was constant, as the men whom we were after were anything but brave and preferred to snipe from behind a corner. I feel I must mention one of the cases that turned up during a search of this nature, as it has a direct connection with an incident which occurred later. The west end of the town which we were supposed to search, was full of night dens in which, beside tea and beer, poisonous home-made vodka was also sold. These places received our special attention be- cause it was also in them that most of the Bolshevik meetings were held, and it was to them that birds of a particular character flocked. 47The White Devil of the Black Sea One night I entered such a dive with two Cossacks and there found in it a considerable number of people, drinking tea and some vodka, while others were playing cards. In that crowd one man espe- cially drew our attention. He had a gloomy face and his appearance was altogether filthy. He wore a soldier’s coat, and was sitting alone in one of the dark corners of the room drinking beer. As we came closer, he drew his head still deeper into the collar of his coat as if he wanted to escape our notice. I gave a tip to one of my Cossacks to keep a sharp eye on him, and proceeded with the second Cossack to search the rest of the party. All except one had to be arrested, for, although not all of them were in possession of firearms, they all had documents bear- ing the signature of the Samara Soviet. So they were all taken out and turned over to the Cossacks outside, while I returned and proceeded to search the gloomy-looking man who had attracted my attention when I first entered the house. On him I found one revolver and three documents. According to the first document he was a pure bred Communist, by the second an ordinary peasant and by the third an officer. I hadn’t the least idea which document was the correct one and. which one I was to believe as he refused to answer any of my questions no matter how hard I pressed him. It was only when I pointed my revolver at him that he gave me his name which was Soldatenkoff. It was with this same Soldatenkoft that I afterwards had a stirring encounter. 48CHAPTER V. IN TRENCHES OF SNOW URING the following days we not only saw the gradual retirement of our forces before the increasing Bolsheviks on the Samara front but we also received quite unexpected reports saying that large Bolshevik forces were likewise advancing from the east along the Tashkent-Orenburg railway. This caused the withdrawal of a considerable number of men from the Samara to the new Tashkent front and placed the anti-Bolshevik forces in an exceed- ingly precarious situation inasmuch as the total number of these forces, not counting my sotnia which were needed to maintain order in the town, was esti- mated at fifteen hundred unmounted men. In spite of these threatening conditions I at last had an opportunity to remain quietly at home with my family, though I knew from experience that whenever 1 was able to enjoy a day of leisure and peace, it always presaged for me some serious trouble as the calm before the storm. One morning while I was at headquarters, a Cos- sack reported to me that a party of mounted men wished to see me. I went out and found a group of men riding small shaggy horses, each in possession of a lasso and a wolf whip instead of arms. It was a party of nomadic Bashkirs from the steppes of 49The White Devil of the Black Sea Aralsk. It is interesting to know that this whip is their favourite weapon for wolf hunting and consists of a short stock with a long leather plaited lash. When hunting wolves, they first place a carcass somewhere in the open field and then hide them- selves with their horses behind bushes or a small hillock in the vicinity. The wolves with their keen sense of smell soon detect food and come out of the woods to devour the bait and eat until they are hardly able to move, lying down to rest after their meal. The Bashkirs wait until the beasts have thus gorged themselves stupid and then rush them from their ambuscades and race wild as the wolves themselves over the steppes after their game, trying to crack them across the bridge of the nose with their lash. A good blow on that part of the head kills the animal on the spot. Then the huntsman finishes the wolf by cutting its throat and finally, in accordance with their superstitious belief, they bite out with their teeth the gristly part of the wolf’s ears, in order to prevent the animal from spoiling. In answer to my inquiries as to who they were and whence they came, their leader replied in poor Russian: “We are nomads of the Bashkir tribe from the Aralsk steppes and have come here to interview the Ataman on a certain business.” ‘The Ataman is very busy just at present but if you tell me what the business is I shall transmit your message the very first moment I have a chance to do so.” “And who art thour’” asked the leader. ‘These 50In Trenches of Snow people always address every one with a “thou” instead of “you.” “T am in command of the Cossack forces in the town,” said I. After that they exchanged a few words between themselves, determining, as I thought, what action they should take; and, having evidently decided that I could be relied upon, they said: “We know that you are fighting with the Bolshe- viks, who rob and kill everybody. At present there are many of them coming here from Tashkent. They attack our camps along their way and take every- thing they can. So we came here to ask the Ataman for his authority to fight them, whenever we have the opportunity of doing so!” I told them that there couldn’t be any harm in fighting Bolsheviks; on the contrary, every one must fight them with all his might if we were to live. After a pause they said: “No, that’s not enough for us. You had better ask the Ataman to deliver us written authority, as nowa- days it is dangerous to commit oneself without a paper justifying one’s action.” I reported the matter to the Ataman, and he gave instructions to give them a written order, saying that the Commander-in-Chief of the Orenburg forces invited all the nomad tribes to join in fighting the common enemy, the Bolsheviks. The result of all this was quite surprising. In five or six days the Bashkirs sent to our headquarters a consignment of four railway truckloads of arms, ammunition and equipment captured by them on the 51The White Devil of the Black Sea Tashkent front. It was eventually found out that the Bashkirs had unexpectedly attacked a convoy of Bolshevik troops on the railway line in the middle of the steppes, had cut out all the Bolsheviks, captured their material and sent the booty as a present to the Ataman. Similar raids were repeated by the Bash- kirs several times after that. It was just after the visit of the Bashkirs that I was sent post-haste by the Ataman to the railway station, because the railway officials had gone on strike and their Committee had voted not to supply anything more to the front, be it troops, rations, or ammunition, for the Cossacks in the line. ‘The orders of the Ataman were to put an end to the strike and noise among the officials and workmen. On the line was standing a train with rations for the front, all ready to start, but there it stood, abandoned, and no- body seemed to be worrying about getting it off nor about the fact that at the front there were wounded men waiting to be brought back to the town hos- pitals. ‘The strikers flatly refused to let the train leave the station. I dismounted the Cossacks, posted them at various points and addressed the workmen as follows: “T am directed by the Ataman to warn you that, unless you resume work and proceed to carry out your duties at once, I am to take drastic measures to compel you to do so. Any one who attempts to create disturbance or interfere with the normal course of the railway traffic will be severely dealt with. And I can assure you that I will enforce his orders without the slightest hesitation. I give you 52In Trenches of Snow ten minutes to make up your minds, and take your choice!” In answer to my announcement one of the fore- men advanced towards me with a drawn revolver, using most obscene language and telling me to go to hell. I had no alternative but to stop him with a revolver shot which laid him out clean. Another man who attempted to damage the throttle and brakes of the engine was hanged on the nearest lamp post. Realising that we were there not to fool about with them but to take action, the work- men sobered down a bit but still refused to let the train go. Then I forced the driver and stoker on to the engine guarded by two Cossacks and escorted the train out of the station myself. It was not until we were beyond the town that I descended and left the Cossacks to keep the train in motion. On returning I left a Cossack platoon on permanent duty at the station to prevent any attempt of the workmen and officials to go on strike again. Next morning I went to interview the Ataman with the object of asking him to let me go to the front, the reason of my request being that my second in command was now suffitieritly recovered from his wounds to take my place at the head of the Cossacks in town. To my great pleasure the Ataman con- sented and said that I could go as soon as I liked. This was already the 22nd of December. On that date the front was at a distance of only eighteen miles from Orenburg and the Red forces, about twenty times as strong as ours, were pressing from all sides 53The White Devil of the Black Sea harder and harder every day. We had only one infantry (or rather dismounted cavalry) detachment of eight hundred rifles with a few machine guns, whereas the Bolsheviks had almost a complete army corps with cavalry, field and heavy artillery count- ing over twenty thousand men. We therefore had no chance. One could even scarcely call it a front, as the operations were carried out solely along the railway line and only at times extended out half a mile each side. It was difficult and unreasonable to go farther into the steppes, the snow being so deep that a man once off the hard road sank to his waist, which naturally made all troop movements im- possible. There was one thing that was absolutely disastrous for us and this was the Bolshevik armoured train, which they brought at times right upon us and simply showered us with machine gun and artillery fire. We had absolutely nothing to protect us from that rain of metal, as it was impossible to dig trenches in the frozen earth. In the night of the 22nd-23rd of December several men volunteered to go forward and blow up the rail- way bridge to prevent tae return of this most ob- jectionable visitor. The expedition was a success, as the Bolsheviks never fought in the night but always retired in their trains about sixty miles to a town called Buzuluk, the headquarters of their army, either for a comfortable sleep or for a rowdy night of carousal. In the line, which they occupied during the day, they used to leave a small post with two field guns. During the whole of the following day, there 54In Trenches of Snow was fierce fighting with varying fortunes. Towards evening we succeeded in advancing about twelve miles and in fortifying as best we could our new position near a railway siding. Here we saw a fear- ful sight. On the wall of the station was actually crucified a young military cadet belonging to our detachment and only seventeen years of age. He had a few days previously set out with a reconnoitering party, was wounded, and was lost unnoticed in a skirmish between our scouts and the Bolsheviks in the dark of a winter night. ‘The poor devil was nailed to the wall quite naked. In the evening we held a council of war, to decide on our further action. Taking into consideration the condition under which we were fighting, without cavalry or artillery, there could of course be no ques- tion of a serious advance. On the other hand it was frightfully hard to continue to remain on a passive defence. It is difficult to realise the physical sufferings our men had to endure during these several weeks of day and night exposure to a temperature of from fifteen to thirty-five degrees below zero with constant wind, having scarcely any food and being unable to take off their clothes. The party was gradually dimin- ishing as there was always a certain number of sick and frozen besides the wounded who had to be daily taken to the rear. It was hopeless to continue to resist under such circumstances. The handful of men we had in the line, no matter how valiant and heroic, would have faded away inno time. We could have managed to do something if we had had cavalry 55The White Devil of the Black Sea with us; for we should have been able to harass the enemy in his rear and on the flanks, and also send out proper reconnoitering parties, using roundabout country roads. It was not, however, possible to do this on foot through the deep snow. At the council it was decided to send an officer to the Ataman and ask him to let us have the only two field guns which were at the disposal of the Oren- burg garrison, and at least two sotnias of Cossacks, even if they had to be drawn from the old men. The council appointed me and two other officers as delegates to interview the Ataman. We were to start off early next morning, but were prevented from doing so by the fact that the Bol- sheviks again began attacking vigorously. So we once more spent the whole day fighting fiercely. The Bolsheviks were very anxious to regain the twelve miles they had previously lost, and we natu- rally did not want to abandon the area we had cap- tured with such difficulty. The fighting was in- cessant and during the day we were five times at grips with bayonets. During one of those attacks, a very disagreeable thing happened to me. In the middle of a bayonet charge my rifle broke in half, so I had to throw it away and use only my sword and revolver, which under the circumstances were much less handy than the rifle. I was all the time wondering about one thing: why was the Bolshevik artillery silent? ‘True, they could not bring up their armoured train within range, because the railway bridge was blown up; but they still had the two field guns which they had left 56In Trenches of Snow for the night to screen their retreat towards Buzuluk. They no doubt had been left in the same place, for to withdraw them would have necessitated using the bridge. Fortunately for us they remained silent throughout the day and thus enabled us to retain the area we had captured the day before. Tired and hungry after the day’s battle, the three of us appointed to interview the Ataman at last started for Orenburg with the object of laying before him our critical situation. At headquarters we were keenly disappointed at finding the Ataman absent. He had gone out of town to one of the neighbouring stanitza or Cossack villages where there was some sort of trouble brew- ing, and was expected back only in the morning. So I went home, rejoicing over the combination of cir- cumstances that enabled me to spend Christmas Eve with my family. When I turned up everybody was very much astonished to see me and began helping me to take off my armour; for my short fur coat was so rigid with ice that I could stand it on the floor instead of hang- ing itup. At supper we discussed the situation, and I plainly told my people that only a miracle could prevent the Bolsheviks from occupying the town; that we could not possibly hold the line under the existing circumstances; and therefore, when the town should be surrendered, we should all have to get into sleighs and just rough it through the steppes and try to reach some point on the Siberian railway, as both the lines to Samar and Tashkent were occupied by the Reds. My wife, mother and sisters looked upon 57The White Devil of the Black Sea this possibility quite calmly, and only asked me to give them fair warning to enable them to collect all their valuables and the very necessary things. In spite of the terrible fatigue, I simply could not manage to drop off to sleep that night. I was worried at the thought that leaving the town to the Bolsheviks was only a matter of days, and at the idea that the family in that case would have to undertake a journey through the wilds of the steppes, not knowing where exactly to go. I was still wondering also if it would not somehow be possible to ameliorate our situation at the front. Towards daylight I succeeded in formulating a plan of my own which [I laid before the Ataman right after breakfast. On arrival at headquarters I found every one there in high spirits over the news which had just been received of the successful fighting of our small de- tachment on the Tashkent railway, and of our twelve mile advance on the Samara line, which had taken place on the 23rd. But unfortunately we who arrived direct from the Samara front had to dis- illusion these cheerful souls, who did not realise all the tragedy of our men in the line. When we were admitted to the Ataman, I began with all my enthusiasm outlining to him my plan. But unfortunately all my hopes of carrying this through were shattered by the order of the Ataman for me to resume the command of the Cossacks in Orenburg, owing to the aggressive attitude of the local Bolsheviks. With regard to the reinforcements for the front, 58In Trenches of Snow the Ataman, after a short consultation with his Chief of Staff, consented to send the two field guns and to try to mobilise old Cossacks from the district with the least possible delay. So at least the main object of my interview with the Ataman had been attained. There were many extraordinary incidents in that great evil of civil war. That day I saw one of them, which might have seemed almost comical to an outsider; but for us it bore the stamp of the deep- est tragedy imaginable. A young, tall, finely built and altogether smart-looking Cossack who had just returned from the German front was standing at attention, absolutely motionless before a small old man, whom one might have called just a bag of bones. It was the young Cossack’s father. ‘This old man was with all his might raining blow after blow with his fists and a whip on the young man’s face. It was his punishment for having helped the Bolsheviks in- stead of defending the rights, lands, and families of the Cossacks on his return from the German front. This was a tragedy, an internal tragedy between the two generations, which split the Cossacks, and, to a certain extent, the ordinary Russian peasantry throughout the Revolution. The old and the new ideas clashed in bitter conflict and there was as strong a revolution between the two generations as there was between the two different classes of society. On the following day our small artillery unit was sent to the front, and three days later I met over two hundred of the old Cossacks, all mounted and well armed, singing their national songs, riding towards the railway station where a train was waiting to take 59The White Devil of the Black Sea them to give a hand to their fellows in the front lines; while the young Cossacks, their sons, who had de- serted the German front, were watching their fathers going to fight, without any sympathy and without admiration, just as though they were strangers. It was ineffably sad and heart-breaking to see this. One of my first jobs in the old role was to engineer another surprise party for a meeting which the police informed me was going to take place in the cara- vansery, an ancient building of Oriental architecture with a mosque in the centre of the inn yard. ‘The members of the meeting were to be prominent local and outside Bolsheviks, some of them even coming from Moscow. I was very anxious to get hold of them, for, al- though we had obtained temporary successes at the front, they were nevertheless quite sure that the town would soon fall into their hands and at that meeting they were going to appoint Commissars to various posts in the Civil Administration of the province, and also the President and members of the Extraor- dinary Commission or Cheka. We gave them sufficient time to assemble and get well into their affairs before we surrounded the building. I posted sentries at all the doors and, hav- ing left a strong detachment of Cossacks in the yard to cut off escape, penetrated into the hall, where the conference was in full swing. Their first movement was to spring to their feet and try to hide all the confidential papers they had spread on the table, but I shouted: “Ffands up, and don’t move!” I then approached the three men who 60In Trenches of Snow were sitting near the centre of the table, in my Opinion representing the presidium of the Confer- ence. One I recognized as a member of the local Bolshevik Committee. On the table before them I found the papers [ wanted containing the names and addresses of per- sons to be appointed to various administrative posts. Having taken possession of these lists, we began to search the approximately one hundred members of the Conference. Many of them were in possession of revolvers and all sorts of interesting and valuable documents. Then from the lists I called out the names of all those who were appointed in the administration. They all responded and were sent under escort to the town prison. It will be interesting later to recall that the person appointed as Military Commissar was one Popoff, a local resident and a student of the Petrograd University. I was a long time trying to get him, as he was one of the most energetic and active members of the Orenburg organisation; but he always had the luck of avoiding arrest. Even here he escaped through the chance of not being present at the meeting. Glancing through the papers which were left on the table, I came across a list of the names of those sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks, and I had the thrill of finding my name among them. Except the eight men whom I had picked out and sent to prison, I released all of them, as they had committed no crime except that of attending the 61The White Devil of the Black Sea conference, which was too small an offence to war- rant my creating for myself more enemies. My chief aim now was to get hold of Popoff, whose photograph I always carried with me; but I must admit that it was not an easy task as he was most careful and plucky. Whenever I located him and tried to corner him, he always succeeded in doing me in by disguising himself in such a way that I could not possibly recognise him. Four times I quite un- expectedly raided his quarters, at different hours each time, and always found him out. Two nights running I watched in disguise beside his house but again without result. In the meantime the Red Army of the Samara front had repaired the railway bridge and com- menced a most energetic advance on our lines, so that notwithstanding the heroic resistance of our small force, we had to withdraw, fighting fiercely over each bit of territory we gave up. Every day there were more and more wounded arriving in Orenburg and the conditions at the front became intolerable. I asked the Ataman to let me have a locomotive and twenty Cossacks and said that I was ready to undertake to blow up one bridge between the Bol- sheviks and the Cossacks and another one in the Bol- shevik rear in order to create panic among the Red troops and thus hold up their advance. The Ataman for some reason was unwilling to use his own authority in this manner and so sent me to consult the “Committee for Safeguarding the Country against the Revolution,” which I did, but found everybody 62In Trenches of Snow so panicstricken that I could not obtain a decisive answer from any of them. ‘The only satisfaction 1 got was that, in leaving the place in a fit of rage and despair against all those defenders of the revolution- ary principles, I broke the glasses on the nose of the President of the Committee, one Rubinstein by name. Thus I never got my locomotive and our men were heroically but vainly dying, trying to hold the little bit of territory which was entrusted to them while the Bolsheviks were pressing harder upon them and creating a wild panic among the popula- tion of Orenburg. Every day the authorities were holding confer- ences to decide what further action was to be taken. At one of the conferences when I was asked what I thought would be the best plan, I gave a sincere and plain answer and, pointing at the five members of the famous Committee, said: “Exactly one month ago I warned you, Gentlemen, that these five scoundrels and traitors should either be hanged or shot, because as it now appears, they were all the time in close contact with the most prominent agents and accomplices of the advancing Red Army and even admitted them to clandestine interviews in their houses. The only thing that can and must be done now is to recall all the Cossack troops from the front to avoid further senseless bloodshed, as it is already quite obvious that we will not be able to.hold the town and we must therefore try to save as many lives and as much material as possible and withdraw altogether into the wilds of the steppes.” 63The White Devil of the Black Sea After this declaration I left the conference and joined my Cossacks who were waiting for me in line just outside the building. By that time the town was already in a state of such indescribable chaos that it made one’s head swim. ‘The local Bolsheviks had lost all sense of restraint and cases of murder and pillage occurred every day. To restore and keep order in the town, I was compelled to abandon all moderation in sup- pressing and punishing the hideous crimes which were every day committed in the most matter of fact way, so that for murder and violation, death on the spot was the punishment without going to any further details of justice. I did not in any way inter- fere with peaceful demonstrations, but was com- pelled to fire on the crowd after three warnings in case of a demonstration dangerous to public safety and creating disorder.CHAPDER AWE THE SWORD OF SHAMYL TI’ was from January 13th that the hardest days began. From that date I had to be in the saddle day and night, frequently not having time to eat. I had arranged with three yamstchiks * to be ready in case of emergency, which could now be expected any day, to be prepared to take my mother, wife and sisters and their luggage out of the town. I myself proposed to get away with the Ataman’s Staff and Cossacks, thus forming a sort of escort to my family. The night of the 15th to 16th of January passed in continuous bloody skirmishes with the rabble of the town. At eight o’clock in the morning I was called to headquarters and received an order from the Ataman to post a guard at the headquarters build- ings where a military conference was to be held, for it was rumoured that the local Bolsheviks were plan- ning to capture the Ataman’s Staff and administrative assistants. I posted patrols at each gate and at the entrance. At about nine o’clock a crowd was be- ginning to gather and there could be no doubt as to its intentions. When my warnings had no effect, I was obliged to open fire on them. Thus three hun- dred Cossacks dispersed the crowd three consecutive * Yamstchik—a driver, usually engaged in carrying the mail through the country. 65| ote The White Devil of the Black Sea times and yet failed to prevent its gathering a fourth time. There was a considerable number of wounded and dead in this crowd of more than a thousand. Finally at eleven o’clock the conference was over and I was summoned to the Ataman. “You will be relieved in a few minutes by your second in command with two hundred Cossacks,” he said. “You may now go and have a rest, but I will need you again to-day; so be here at four o’clock.” “Has anything definite been decided about leav- ing the towne” I asked him. “No,” he answered, ‘nothing definite has yet been decided and all will remain just as it was until further orders. Our men are still holding the line!” I was wondering on what he was basing such a statement and only afterwards did I learn that an order had already been sent to the front instructing our troops to discontinue fighting and to withdraw along the ice of the river Sakmara towards the vil- lage of Kargala, north east of the position occupied, and join the staff of the Ataman in that place. I went home, had something to eat and, having warned my family that the time had come when they must pack up and be ready for any eventuality, I dropped on the bed and went fast asleep. I had asked my wife to wake me at three-thirty sharp; but her tender feminine heart this time played me a turn that save for a miracle, might have cost my life. See- ing how tired I was and fast asleep, she hadn't the heart to wake me at 3.30 and so let me sleep until nearly seven. When she told me the hour, I sprang to my feet, 66 - ZA pee ™ - aThe Sword of Shamyl my blood boiling with anger, jumped on my horse and flew like a madman to headquarters. On arrival I was struck by the absolute quiet and emptiness reigning there. There was only one sentry, a Tartar, on patrol at the gate. ‘“Where’s the Atamanr” I flung at him. “The Atamanr He went off with his Staff at four o'clock. Didn’t you know that? Now the power in the town has been taken over by the Tartars.” His first word staggered me, but his second cheered me up a little, as I knew that the Tartar population of the town amounted to forty thousand, and that they were strongly opposed to the Revolution and to Bol- shevism especially. “Where are your chiefs?” queried J, having in view, as the only logical issue out of my situation, to offer them my services, being on very friendly terms with the Tartars in general. “Our chiefs are in the Prison building, right on the other side of the town,” answered the sentry. So I went there and found the Prison quite empty and all the prisoners whom I had arrested and put in prison during the last two months released by the local Bolsheviks the moment the Ataman had left the town and before the Tartars had time to establish their guard. In the prison office I found the new man in charge, a Tartar with his six assistants and a guard. They appeared to me to be confused and lost, but they knew me straight away and said: “We really don’t know what to do! It is still un- certain whether we shall be able to hold the town against the Bolsheviks and organise a_ strong 67The White Devil of the Black Sea authority of our own or not. Already they have sent us two colonels and several officers to be held in prison, and we don’t know what to do with them!” To this I responded with an unhesitating com- mand: “You must let them go at once. I have just seen your new chiefs, from whom I have full authority for their release. Give me the keys of their cells. I shall take the responsibility for all this.” They handed me the keys and I set the officers free. It appeared that they had found themselves in exactly the same position as myself, in that they were not warned that the Cossacks were leaving town and had no possibility of getting away afterwards as all the yamstchiki, including the three I had engaged for my family, had been requisitioned for the mem- bers of the Ataman’s Staff. I advised them to leave the town as soon as they could, even if it were on foot, and hide in the nearest villages, otherwise they would be shot immediately. They were just prepar- ing to go when the prison office was invaded by several Bolsheviks with some more officers and their wives under arrest. Seeing the previously arrested officers released and in my company, they were mo- mentarily perplexed until one of them shouted: “Get hold of him, it is the chief of the Cossacks; there is an order that he must be shot on sight!” If I had lost my head and self-control at that moment or shown nervousness and fright we should all have gone behind the bars and to subsequent death; but, although I knew that I was putting my head in a noose, I realised that I had no other option 68The Sword of Shamyl and therefore coolly overawed the Tartar with the dictum: “The Bolsheviks have ordered you to shoot mer Very well. But the new Tartar Government and my conscience order me to destroy you. You are using a power which no one has bestowed upon you””—and with those words and my revolver closed the argu- ment. Then with the help-of the other officers we rounded up the remaining Bolsheviks, shoved them into the cells and locked them there. ‘This took only about two minutes. Putting the keys in my pocket, I advised the officers to get away at once. The man in charge of the prison stood still there, gaping at me. With the keys in my possession I hurried out only to find that my horse was no longer where I had left it. Obviously some admirer of Bolshevik principles and the horse had found it good enough for him and appropriated it. So I had to put up with it and walk. In the streets the Bolsheviks were already at work; a Cossack officer was hanging on a lamp-post, firing was heard from all parts of the town and the sky was lurid with burning houses. I felt a creepy sensation gradually overwhelming me, and my nerves were wrought to their limit. I found an izvostchik * and told him to take me to the Tartar headquarters; [ did not want to go home before ascertaining what was the best plan for the future for I did not wish to disturb my family before it was absolutely necessary. Strangely * Izvostchik—cab. 69The White Devil of the Black Sea enough, I failed to realise the danger to which I was exposed and somehow didn’t think of it. When I arrived back at the Tartar headquarters, I found the courtyard filled with a crowd of every description. Telling my izvostchik to wait, I hurried past the sentry, ran up the main staircase and, with a feeling that I should make a real impression on these Tartars when presenting them the keys of their prison with its Bolshevik inmates, strode with intentional bravado through the door the guard pointed out as that of the Staff—and it was, that of the Bolshevik Staff. It looked as though I meant to do the thing handsomely and bring my record to them on a silver salver sealed with the damning keys jangling in my pocket. The door that I had myself closed behind me appeared for the moment to be life’s final portal. Here in front of me were the men who had been my prisoners; there was also that Tikhon Popoff with whom I had played hare and hounds these many weeks. Through the mutual astonishment that blanketed us all, his well-known, though never seen, face gave the cue for the next move. Drawing out of my pocket the ’photo of him which I always carried there, I said to him: “At last I have found you, Tikhon Ivanovitch!” “Yes,” he said, “you have found me right enough I admit, but this time you have lost the game!” and addressing the Bolsheviks he ordered: ‘Comrades, seize him; for he is a most dangerous counter- revolutionary and you all know perfectly well the trouble he has given us!”’ 70The Sword of Shamyl I hadn’t even time to realise what was happening and draw my revolver, when I was knocked off my feet and crushed by a crowd of armed men from behind. I tried to defend myself but a terrific blow on the head with the butt-end of a rifle knocked me senseless and left me unconscious. When I came to I heard an awful shouting and the arguing of many voices around me. A few minutes later I realised that it was over me the argument was raging between the Bolsheviks and the Tartars. I made an effort to get up but a sharp pain in my head prevented my doing so. Having noticed that I moved, the crowd again became excited and I heard a frightful clamour of voices in my ears. Then a Tartar officer came up to me and, raising his voice above the noise of the crowd, said: “Comrades! The power is not yet in your hands. It is still in the hands of the Tartar Government. It is I who am in charge of this building and am responsible before my Government for anything that happens in this place. Therefore it is 1 who am responsible also for this officer and I here and now place him under arrest for safe custody!” Having said this, he helped me to get up and, while the Bol- sheviks were loudly protesting, he took me into the next room and said: “Give your arms up to me; otherwise I cannot answer for anything that may happen, and then you are lost!” It was a real tragedy for me to give up my arms and especially my beautiful ancient Damascus blade, but the thought that refusing to give them up might 71| ji The White Devil of the Black Sea lessen my chances predominated and I surrendered them up with sadness after all they had been to me. Taking them with him, he went out and locked the door. There I lay all alone, regretting most of all my beloved sword. The reason of my special regret at parting with that sword was this. Aside from the fact that it was in itself a wonderful piece of work and had rendered me valuable services during the Great War, it had a unique and most interesting history. In former days it had belonged to the great Shamyl, the Iman or regional religious leader of Islam for Central Asia, part of Russia and the Caucasus, who in the fifties of last century raised the green flag of Holy War—Gazavaat—and fired the country with his fanatic daring. When in 1859 the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in the Caucasus, Prince Bariatinsky, defeated his army in the mountains of Daghestan near a village called Gunib, Shamyl was finally sur- rounded and had to give himself up. He, however, refused to allow anybody to disarm him, and proudly marched straight to Prince Bariatinsky, who awaited him and, taking off his sword, himself proudly handed it to the Prince with these words: “T cannot and will not allow my sword to pass into unknown or undeserving hands. JI, therefore, hand it over to you, a Russian General, who has conquered me and my army.” Later on Prince Bariatinsky made a present of it to my grandfather for his col- lection of arms, where it was kept up to the time when I took it with me to the front in 1914. 72 - . ‘ -CHAPTER Vit EXECUTED! BSOLUTELY exhausted, I threw myself on the sofa. My clothes were torn, my body was all sore, and a splitting headache was torturing me. I realised that I was coming to the end of my days and I could not think of anything. I closed my eyes. The row in the next room was still continuing and I clearly heard my name mentioned several times. There was only one thought in my head; if it is the end, then may it come quickly, as waiting for it was intolerable. Then the thought of my family burned me like a red hot iron. How was it I had been so stupid and not seen through it all beforer When the news of the collapse of the Ataman’s power reaches my wife she is almost sure to start in search of me and, if she comes here to headquarters, she will doubtlessly also be arrested. ‘This idea was almost driving me mad. I sprang to my feet and began thinking of a way to escape but there was little time to think, and besides not much use in thinking, as there was only one door to the room and this led to the council chamber where the brutes were specu- lating on my fate. I went up to the window which I found overlooked the yard. Had the latter been empty, I could have jumped even from the second 73The White Devil of the Black Sea story as there was a considerable heap of snow just below. But, as the yard was full of Bolsheviks and Tartars, my jumping would not have taken me any further towards freedom. The only thing for me to do was to wait for events to develop and possibly give me a chance. Several hours passed in this torturing expectancy. The noise in the other room quieted down at times but only for a short while, to begin again with re- doubled force. [saw through the window three men stood “against the wall’; a volley, and the poor devils fell on the snow shot dead—a rather disheartening sight for a man in my position! ‘This state of un- certainty was becoming absolutely intolerable, and I was beginning to think again of jumping out of the window, when I heard the noise of the key in the lock. As the door opened, the same Tartar officer came in with Popoff and signalled me to. follow them. Popoff began jesting me over the fact that, no matter how I tried, I had always failed to catch him, and assured me that now he would do the utmost to send me into a better world than this. I followed them, dead sure that this was the end and that I would be shot in a few minutes. In the next room I found some more officers who had been arrested and the same crowd of Tartars and Bolsheviks. ‘The Tartar officer said to us: “We are obliged to give all the power to the Bol- sheviks, as we have scarcely any arms and cannot ficht against them.” That finished me. I realised there was no escape. Two guards escorted me through the crowd and from 74Executed! remarks overheard I understood that I was being taken to be shot. As we were making our way through a crowd of Bolsheviks all carrying rifles, I was expecting every minute to have a bayonet stuck in my back,—a very uncomfortable feeling, I must admit. Never in my life shall I forget the sensa- tions of those two or three minutes! The thought that I would be put against the wall in a few seconds was of course somewhat terrifying, but the appalling apprehension of this bayonet thrust was worse; in fact it was so agonising that a cold perspiration was breaking out all over me and I was biting my lips till they bled, trying to overcome the desire to look back, and by this let the Bolsheviks think I was frightened. I was led through a large yard full of people who saw me off with threats, hoots, and whistles, and was taken into a smaller yard beyond, surrounded with a low fence. Even then I was still thinking of how to escape . . . as they stood me against the wall with my face toward it, apparently intending to shoot me in the back. I refused their arrangement and swung round to face my executioners. The moonlight was brilliant, the night was quiet and frosty. No words can tell how I loved the world and how I hated to be separated from life at that moment. Visions of home and family hung for a second before me .. . but my thoughts were inter- rupted by one of the soldiers: “Well, Tovartstch, stand up straight, we’ve no time to waste with you. Aurevoir. Hope to see you soon again.” idThe White Devil of the Black Sea The rifles went up . . . —The moment was ghastly. I saw that they were aiming right at my head. I had an impulse to run, but my limbs were paralysed and would not obey. I heard a voice counting: ONC HIWO. «