It's an extremely dangerous and responsible post.... But we've got to fight... to sacrifice ourselves... "
Through the window came the loud, discordant sound of a military band playing the Internationale.
Govyadin doubled up in his chair and placed his head on the stomach of Dmitri Stepanovich. His tow-coloured hair was as lifeless as a doll's wig.
The sun set behind an enormous thundercloud.
The approach of night brought no coolness.
The stars were hidden in mist.
The artillery fire from the other side of the river became louder and more frequent.
The houses shook with each explosion.
The Bolshevik battery of 6-inch guns, posted behind the grain elevator, answered through the gloom.
Machine guns barked from the roofs.
From Red Army outposts in the suburb across the river, reached by a wooden bridge, came faint reports.
The huge cloud spread over the sky, emitting thunderous mutterings.
It became pitch-dark.
The only lights to be seen either in the town or on the riverbank were the flashes from the guns.
No one was asleep in the town.
The Committee of the Constituent Assembly held uninterrupted session in mysterious underground premises.
Volunteers from officers' organizations, fully armed, fumed and fretted in their homes.
The townsmen stood at their windows, peering out into the nocturnal gloom.
Street patrols called to one another intermittently.
In intervals of silence could be heard the shrill dreary whistling of engines drawing eastward-bound trains.
The watchers at windows saw the forked lightning traversing the sky from end to end.
The turbid waters of the Volga gleamed fitfully.
Barges and steamers at the jetty stood out in momentary silhouette.
High over the river, towering above the iron roofs, appeared and disappeared the vast bulk of the elevator, the slender spire of the Lutheran church, the white belfry of the convent, built, it was said, with money collected by Susanna, a nun.
The lightning ceased.
All was darkness....
The clouds dispersed.
A wind rose, howling dismally in the chimneys.
The Czechs went to the attack.
They advanced in thin lines from the railway station of Kryazh, by way of the railway bridge, skirting the tallow factories, upon the river suburb.
The broken ground, the dike, the low-growing bushes of purple willow, all made rapid progress impossible.
The key to the town consisted in the two bridges—the wooden one, and the railway bridge.
The Bolshevik artillery, from the ground behind the elevator, was shelling the approaches.
The heavy firing and the explosions kept up the courage of the Red divisions, who had not much confidence in the military experience of their commanders.
Towards morning the Czechs had recourse to a ruse.
In the hutments beside the elevator lived the remnants of Polish refugees with their wives and children.
The Czechs knew of this.
When the shells began to burst over the elevator, the Poles ran helter-skelter from the huts and rushed hither and thither in search of shelter.
The artillerymen chased them all away from the guns with oaths, and with blows from ramrods.
When the 6-inch guns roared, the refugees, blinded and deafened, fled in all directions. And suddenly another crowd of women came running out of the barns, shrieking:
"Don't shoot, Pani—don't shoot, pity the unfortunate, we beseech you!"
They surrounded the cannon on all sides.
The odd-looking Polish women seized upon the cleaning rods and the cannon wheels; getting a firm grip on the arms of the gunners, who were half stunned by the hubbub, the "women" hung upon them with their whole weight, caught at their hands, and dragged them to the ground. Beneath the bodices of these women were military tunics, beneath their skirts—breeches....
"It's the Czechs, lads!" shouted a voice, and the next moment the speaker's head was shattered by a revolver shot. Some of the gunners tried to beat off the newcomers, others fled headlong.... But the Czechs had removed the breechblocks from the guns, and beaten a retreat, firing all the time.
Then they disappeared into the spaces between the barns as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up.
The battery was silenced, its machine guns put out of action.
The Czechs continued to advance, capturing the Samara suburb down to the very bank of the Volga.
By daybreak the clouds had dispersed.
The scorching sun beat upon the unwashed windows of Dmitri Stepanovich's room.
The doctor was seated at the window, fully dressed.