“I don’t know,” said Frank, having hard work to make himself heard. “Let’s try and get to the carriage.”
“Impossible, my lad,” said Captain Murray. “Great heavens! what a gehenna!”
The yelling rose louder than ever from the direction of Cheapside, and directly after the cause was known, for a heavy, ringing volley rang out clear and sharp above the roar of the crowd, and went on reverberating from side to side of the street.
Hardly had it died away when another rattling volley came from the other direction; and in answer to an inquiring look from Frank, Captain Murray placed his lips to the boy’s ear.
“The foot guards,” he cried; “the mob is between two fires.”
The pressure was now terrible, the crowd yielding to the attack from both directions, and yells, wild cries, and groans rose in one horrible mingling, as for a few minutes the seething mass of people were driven together in the centre formed by the carriages; and from where he sat, gazing wildly at the chaos of tossing arms and wild faces, whose owners seemed now to be thinking of nothing but struggling for their lives, Frank could see men climbing over their fellows’ heads, dashing in windows, and seeking safety by climbing into the houses, whose occupants in many cases reached down to drag people up out of the writhing mass beneath. In half a dozen places streams could be seen setting into the side streets; and mingled with the attacking party, dragoons of the escort, perfectly helpless, were pressed slowly along, and in every instance with one, sometimes with two men mounted behind them.
Frank caught these things at a glance, while his and the captain’s mounts were being slowly forced farther away from the carriages, which were once more stationary, jammed in by the densest portion of the crowd.
And now, without a thought of his own safety, the boy’s heart began to beat high, for not a single dragoon was near the prisoners, and some strange movement was evidently taking place there, but what, it was some moments before he could see.
It seemed to him that several people there had been injured, and that those between him and the first carriage had been crushed to death, while the crowd were passing the bodies over their heads face upward toward the narrow side street up which an effort had been made to drag the carriages.
As far as he could make out by the lamplight, that was it evidently, and so strangely interested was the lad, so fascinated by the sight, that he paid no heed to a couple more volleys fired to right and left. For the moment he hardly knew why he was watching this. Then it came home to him as he twice over saw a gleam as of metal on one of the bodies which floated as it were over a forest of hands and glided onward toward and up the side street.