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Terrible rumours were being whispered among these fugitives in Sebastopol. Someone had told someone else that Trotsky had given his armies free right, in return for victory, to do as they would in this seaport for fourteen days of pillage and massacre. People who had escaped from towns already occupied by Red troops—one of them was General Lukomsky disguised as a peasant—came with the news that massacre had already begun under the direction of Bela Kuhn, that monster who had fled from Budapesth after many atrocities.

A placard had been pasted up on the walls and the warehouses alongside the quays. Michael stared at it, with his sister Olga trying to read it over his shoulder. It was a proclamation by General Wrangel. A group of soldiers and a crowd of men and women of the bourgeois class pressed close and elbowed each other to make out these printed words.

“What does it say, Michael?” asked Olga, clinging to his arm.

“Nothing too pleasant,” said Michael in a low voice. He read the words as one of the soldiers fell back.

The fate of the refugees is utterly unknown. No foreign nation has consented to receive them. In these conditions the Government of South Russia is obliged to advise all those who are not directly menaced by enemy reprisals to remain in the Crimea.

“That means we are to have our throats cut,” said Olga. “It means that if I don’t get my throat cut I shall have to become the plaything of a Red officer or any Red devil who likes the look of me.”

She gave a kind of laugh which was horrible to hear.

“Don’t talk like that!” said Michael harshly. “For God’s sake, Olga—I put all my hope on Miss Browne’s English officer.”

“No doubt he has already forgotten us,” answered Olga. “If Miss Browne had been more beautiful he might have remembered.”

“He is British,” said Michael.

They went back to where their mother and sister were waiting on the quayside.

“What has happened?” asked Michael’s mother. She stood up with terror in her eyes at a sudden wailing cry which rose from the multitude of refugees to whom General Wrangel’s proclamation had become known. Hundreds of thousands of these refugees came surging down to the quayside. They had abandoned their farm carts and packing-cases. They stretched out their arms towards the sea and cried out to the silent ships lying in the harbour, already crowded by people like themselves. There were many battleships and a lot of transports. Some of them were old ships belonging formerly to the Russian Imperial Navy. Others were French and English cruisers with steam up. As rapidly as possible and as many as possible, the refugees were allowed to embark, and naval officers helped to carry the bundles and chests, and even their babies, moved to pity by all this tragedy and terror. There was a wild stampede which for a time separated Michael from his family. These panic-stricken people fought with each other to get a place on one of those boats which would take them away from Red Russia. Michael pushed and struggled among them to get back to the place where his mother had been standing. She was there now, with Olga and Tania and Miss Browne. Her face was dead white and she seemed to have grown older since he had parted from her only a few minutes ago. Her lips moved. Her face was like a Chinese mask.

“Oh, Michael!” cried Tania. “There’s no chance for us. We’re lost.”

“I’m sure Mr. Alden will come for us,” said Miss Browne quietly. “He promised. Our only chance is to wait for him here.”

A siren on one of the ships gave a long hooting blast. Several boats were moving away from the quayside after hauling up their gangways and unfastening their ropes.

“We’re left behind,” said Olga. “Brownie’s Englishman has betrayed us. They all do.”

“Not yet,” said Miss Browne, gazing towards a ship with a British flag.

Russian soldiers elbowed their way through the crowd. With them was a very tall man in the uniform of the Kornilov regiment. It was General Wrangel. His face was very white and his eyes mournful. The crowd made a lane for him, and at the end of it he turned and faced them and spoke to them in a tragic voice:

“We’re going towards the unknown. I have no idea of the fate in store for us. Prepare yourselves for the worst ordeals, for the hardest privations, and remember that the deliverance of Russia is still in your hands.”

Then he turned towards Moscow, so far away, and crossed himself and knelt down with his forehead to the earth of that country now to be abandoned to Lenin and his way of rule. With that symbolic act he rose and strode down the quayside to a pinnace which took him aboard the General Kornilov. From the crowd on the quayside there came a kind of a moan.

“We are lost!” said Michael’s mother in a voice of despair. She spoke in German, which was the language of her own people until she had become the wife of a Russian and the mother of Michael.

A naval officer stood beside them.

“Come along quick,” he said. “I have two men to carry your bags. You will have to leave your cases.”

“What, all my clothes!” cried Olga in English.

It was characteristic of Olga that she resisted this order to leave her clothes behind, even though life itself hung on a thin thread at that moment.

“Sorry!” said the naval officer, who was Oliver Alden. “Better make no fuss about it, my dear ... Miss Browne, could you hang on to this handbag?”

“Rather!” said Miss Browne, who was already carrying two heavy bundles and some brown-paper parcels. She looked, in her coat and skirt, as though she had been shopping in Brompton Road—a very English-looking young woman of twenty-eight or so, with steady grey eyes above a somewhat inadequate nose.

Tania and Olga carried other bundles. Michael had his violin in its case, but managed to shoulder a heavy bag.

It was difficult to get through the struggling crowd. Except for the naval men it would have been impossible. There was a launch alongside the quay, overcrowded by other fugitives. Brownie’s officer stepped into it, and held out his hand to Michael’s mother and her two daughters and helped them aboard.

A frenzied cry rose from the people on the quayside.

“I can’t carry another soul,” said Lieutenant Alden. “I’m very sorry. It’s horrible, I know. But that’s how it is.”

He spoke a quiet word in English and the boat shot away from the quayside of Sebastopol. It carried the fugitives to a cruiser lying behind the General Kornilov. British seamen helped them up the rope ladder.

“Give me the baby, mum,” said one of them to a young Russian mother with her child. “I’ve two of my own in Limehouse.”

The Russian lady, who was the Countess Troubetskoi, did not understand this man’s Cockney English, but understood his meaning and let him take her baby.

Young Markov, called Michael, stood with his mother on the deck of an English ship. Her hand held very tight to his own.

“It’s the last of Russia,” she said, in a low voice. “Our Russian life is gone, Michael.”

Across the water the bells of Sebastopol were tolling. It was almost dark now, and presently all light faded from the sky. Suddenly it was lit by red flames, symbolical of the red fury from which these people had fled, leaving a multitude behind to be burnt in that furnace.

The offices of the American Red Cross had caught fire and its stocks were blazing. A British torpedo-boat sent a wireless message to the other ships that the first detachment of Bolsheviks was entering the city. Frightful scenes were happening on the quayside. Soldiers had flung their rifles into the sea. Screams rose from women. A shot rang out. A Russian officer had blown his brains out to save further trouble. The fleet and the transports moved out of the harbour, and the exiles looked back to Russia for the last time, and wept.