Personal danger was unthought of when Augusta Ashton pointed to needful service. The lobby door closed after him with a bang before she had well explained her wishes; and when Augusta re-appeared in the drawing-room, Ellen Chadwick’s head was stretched from the window, watching the sturdy young man stem the on-rushing tide of humanity—the only one in all that crowd with his face turned towards the danger from which the rest fled in desperation.
The sights and sounds that met her eyes and ears were terrible: gashed faces and maimed limbs; appeals and imprecations mingled with the roar of a surging crowd; the dropping fire of musketry; the coarse shouts of the yeomanry, drunk with wine and blood!
As her fearful eyes followed Jabez, a man rushed past whose hand had been chopped off at the wrist. With the remaining hand he held his hat to catch the vital stream which gushed from the bleeding stump; and as he ran, he cried, “Blood for blood! blood for blood!” in a tone which made her shudder.
Faint and sick, she drew back her head; but open apprehension for her dear father, and secret fear for the apprentice who had gone so readily to pilot him through that surging human sea, caused her to look forth once more. Augusta and her friend, with blanched cheeks and lips, were also at the window, fascinated as it were with that which chilled them.
Jabez turned the corner into Piccadilly, where one or two good houses had been converted into shops without lowering the floors, or removing the original palisades, which enclosed bold flights of steps leading to doors with good shop-windows on each side. A confectioner of some standing named Mabbott occupied the second of these. He and his neighbour were hurriedly putting up their shutters as Jabez, crushing his way through the thickening crowd, saw Molly and Mr. Chadwick jammed up against the palisades, a young mounted yeomanry officer, in all his pride of blue and silver, brandishing his sabre, urging his unwilling steed upon them, and shouting—
“Move on, you rebels, move on! or I’ll cut you down!”
Strong of nerve and will, Jabez thrust the impending throng aside, and grasped the horse’s reins to force it back, crying as he did so—
“Shame, you coward! to attack a woman and a paralysed man!”
“Come in here, quick, Mr. Chadwick!” cried Mr. Mabbott at that instant, opening his closed gate and drawing the feeble gentleman and his attendant within, as the sabre, raised either to terrify or strike the old man, came down on the outstretched arm of Jabez, gashing it frightfully.
Another of the corps riding past, with his eyes full upon them, stopped his horse at the gallop as if to interpose, but he was too late.