cage. Hearing the uproar, the Commandant emerged and, sensing at once the full significance of the threatening situation, made a sign with his hand. The keepers fled at once from the yard to within the walls of the building, and the soldiers, gathered near the office entrance, fired a volley that swept the pen.
Barabash, running across the cage in wild fright, gave a despairing cry, crumpled up and rose no more. Wierzbicki went down like a felled oak, with his arms spread as its great, strong branches. With an unfinished curse on his lips the cobbler also dropped on his back and cheated both the tribunal and his gipsy prophet. Some wounded convicts, limping and covered with blood, sought shelter behind a pile of broken bricks in one corner of the cage, while others continued to hurl stones and pieces of wood at the soldiers. After a second volley, fired in the air, things calmed down. One by one the convicts were led out of the cage, chained and taken away into the cells.
In the ominous silence that followed the keepers carried out the bodies of the killed; and then the law authorities arrived, made their investigation and went away, leaving behind them new tortures and vexations for the human dust, which this time nearly succeeded in streaming out of the stone sack, into which it had been rammed for misery and suffering.
