no trace of them was to be found. A fortnight later there was a terrible storm on the Black Sea, and the bodies of the missing men were washed up on the rocks of Odessa breakwater and along the shore; they had been taken out to sea in small boats, stones tied to their feet, and then been dropped over alive into deep water. Hundreds of others were captured and taken on board the Almaz and the Sinope, the largest cruiser of the Black Sea Fleet. Here they became victims of unthinkable tortures.
“On the Sinope General Chormichoff and some other personal friends of my own were fastened one by one with iron chains to planks of wood and pushed slowly, inch by inch, into the ship’s furnaces and roasted alive. Others were tied to winches, the winches turned until the men were torn in two alive. Others were taken to the boilers and scalded with boiling steam; they were then moved to another part of the ship and ventilating fans set revolving that currents of cold air might blow on the scalds and increase the agony of the torture. The full names of 17 of the Sinope victims were given me in writing by members of their families or their personal friends. These were lost later when my rooms were raided, my papers seized, and I myself arrested and thrown into prison.
“The house in the Catherine Square in which I was first in captivity afterwards became the Bolshevists’ House of Torture in which hundreds of victims were done to death. The shrieks of the people being tortured to death or having splinters of wood driven under the quick of their nails were so agonizing and appalling that personal friends of my own living more than a hundred yards away