Alas! if we were powerless in the morning, we were equally so now. The mob carried us whithersoever it listed. We were flung bodily from side to side, shot down narrow streets like stones from a catapult, jammed together without power of movement, then pushed forward again by the masses in the rear.
Rakoczy soon disappeared. Stephen was yards in front, separated from me by hundreds of yelling madmen. I was panting and breathless, and felt as if some one had beaten me well with a stout stick.
A man just before me--a small, pale man with wide-open, frightened eyes--went down, and was lost in the crowd; it was like dropping a pin.
Had his life been worth the value of the universe, no one could have saved him; as it was, he simply dropped, like a stone into the water, and the crowd pressed over him.
To add to the uproar, the tocsin sounded, and everywhere it seemed as if the soldiers were discharging their muskets.
In one street people were busy erecting a barricade. The head of the crowd, seeing this, wished to turn back; they might as well have tried to turn the stars in their course.
The street was narrow and sloping; unfortunately, we shot into it from the higher end, and there was no stopping.
Those in front raised a cry of despair as they were hurled against the half-built barricade, the workers on the other side of which ran into the houses, while the living torrent swept on.
Crash went the structure--logs of wood, bodies of carts, stuffed sacks, piles of stones, and human beings all mingled together! I caught a brief glimpse of Stephen wedged into the corner of a doorway, looking as if he would be squeezed to death, but there was no helping him.
I was off my feet, supported only by the bodies of my nearest companions, one of whom moaned in pain.