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Updated: May 26, 2025
He stopped as if paralyzed. I suppose he had suddenly understood that the explosion of a bomb in that small, high-walled yard would kill every man in it. "One!" cried Verbitzsky. "But I may not hit him!" said I. "No matter. If it explodes within thirty feet of him he will move no more." I took one step forward and raised the bomb. Did I mean to throw it? I do not know. I think not.
Surrender instantly." He drew his revolver and pointed it at us. "Michael," said Verbitzsky to me, in that steely voice which I had never before heard from my gentle comrade; "Michael, Nolenki can shoot but one of us before he dies. Take this bomb. Now if he hits me you throw your bomb at him. If he hits you I will throw mine."
Its members solemnly devote all their lives to teaching the poor people to read, think, save, avoid vodka, and seek quietly for such liberty with order as here in America all enjoy. Was that work a crime in Verbitzsky and me? Was it a crime for us to steal to the freight-shed of the Moscow and St. Petersburg Railway that night in December two years ago?
"That's what Boris whispered to me in the wool-shed office. He meant to load them to-morrow before going to His Imperial Majesty's train. Nolenki will be laughed to death in Moscow, if not sent to Siberia." Verbitzsky was right.
Verbitzsky was cousin to Zina and Boris, and as his young head was a wise one, Boris wished to consult him. We both went, hoping to persuade him out of the crime he meditated. "No," said Boris, "my mind is made up. I may never have such another chance. I will fling these two bombs under the foremost car at the middle of the Volga Bridge.
It was a vision of what one or two desperate men with bombs might do at close quarters against a number with pistols. As Verbitzsky approached the south end of the yard, which is excavated deeply and walled in from the surrounding streets, he turned, to my amazement, away from the line that led into the suburbs, and ran along four tracks that led under a street bridge.
From high above the roofs of the warehouses the full moon so clearly illuminated the yard that we could see every button on our assailants' coats, and even the puffs of fat Nolenki's breath. He stood panting on the opposite wall of the excavation. "Halt, or die!" cried Verbitzsky, in a terrible voice. The bombs were clearly to be seen in his hands.
What had Alexander Verbitzsky and I done that the secret service of our father, the Czar, should dog us for five months, and in the end drive us to Siberia, whence we have, by the goodness of God, escaped from Holy Russia, our mother? They called us Nihilists as if all Nihilists were of one way of thinking!
Next moment Verbitzsky was beside me. "Give me your bomb. Now, Michael," he said loudly, "I will stand guard over these wretches till I see you beyond the freight-sheds. Walk at an ordinary pace, lest you be seen and suspected." "But you? They'll rise and fire at you as you run," I said. "Of course they will. But you will escape. Here! Good-bye!"
The chief of the Moscow secret police was reputed a brave man, but he was only a cruel one. Now his knees trembled so that we could see them shake, and his teeth chattered in the still cold night. Verbitzsky told me afterward that he feared the man's slow brain had become so paralyzed by fright that he might not be able to think and obey and jump down.
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