“Look, boy! Do you see?” said Captain Murray, with his lips close to the lad’s ear. “They have dragged the prisoners out, and are passing them over the heads of the crowd.”
Frank nodded his head sharply without turning to the speaker, for he could not remove his eyes from the scene till the last fettered figure had passed from his sight.
And now at length the awful pressure began to relax, for the half-dozen streams were setting steadily out of the main street, while in several spots where dragoons had sat wedged in singly two had drifted together. Then there were threes and fours, and soon after a little body of about twenty had coalesced, stood in something like order, and were able to make a stand. Right away toward Cheapside there was now visible beneath a faint cloud of smoke, which looked ruddy in the torch- and lamplight, a glittering line above the heads of the still dense crowd, and Frank grasped the fact that they were bayonets. Then turning in the other direction he saw, far up the street toward Islington, another glittering line, showing that a second body of infantry barred the way.
And now once more came the sound of firing, and Frank’s heart resumed its wild beating, for it came rolling down the side street nearly opposite to him, that up which he had seen the prisoners passed, and he knew that troops must be guarding the end.
This was plain enough, for the steady stream passing up it grew slower, then stopped; there was a tremendous shouting and yelling, and the human tide came slowly rolling back, then faster and faster, till it set right across the main street, and joined one going off in the opposite direction.
Soon after, to the boy’s horror, he caught sight of one of the prisoners being borne along over the heads of the returning crowd; then of another and another. And now, as the two lines of dimly seen bayonets drew nearer in both directions, there was once more the sound of the trumpet; and in half a dozen places the dragoons began to form up, and, minute by minute growing stronger in the power to move, swords were seen to flash, and they forced their way through the stream, cutting it right across, and hemming in the portion of the crowd over whose heads the perfectly helpless prisoners were being borne.
This manoeuvre having been executed, the rest proved simple. Knot after knot of the dragoons forced their way up to what had become their rallying-point, the foot guards were steadily advancing up and down the main street toward the carriages, and another company was steadily driving the people back along the side street up which the prisoners had been borne.
“A brave attempt, Frank,” said Captain Murray; “but they have failed. Come along;” and, dizzy with excitement, the boy felt his horse begin to move beneath him toward the escort which formed a crescent round the carriages in double rank, through which they passed slowly the men of the crowd they had entrapped, till some forty or fifty only remained, whose retreat was cut off by the bristling line of bayonets drawn across the side street down which they had come.
Frank had no eyes for the scene behind him, now shown by the light of many smoky torches,—the roadway littered with hats, sticks, and torn garments, trampled people lying here and there, others who had been borne and laid down close to the houses, whose occupants were now coming out to render the assistance badly enough needed, for even here many were wounded and bleeding from sword cuts: of the ghastly traces of the firing, of course, nothing was visible there. He did not heed either the state of the dragoons, who had not escaped scot free, many of them being injured by sword and cudgel; some had been dragged from their horses and trampled; others stood behind the double line, separated from their mounts, which had gone on with the crowd; most of them were hatless, while several had had their uniforms torn from their backs.
Frank had no eyes for all this; his attention was too fully taken up by the proceedings near the carriages, where the fettered and handcuffed prisoners—five—were being passed in by men of the foot guards, who then formed up round the vehicles, toward which the two teams of horses were now brought back, the men roughly knotting together the cut traces, and fastening them ready for a fresh start toward the prison.