Sharp and clear, however, came the words of command, and sullenly the legions of Labour prepared for the fray. Once again victory rested with the revolutionaries. Nor was I surprised, for to me, at that stage of the struggle, it seemed as if the police and the soldiers had bided their time too long. An armed mob gathered together in the space known as the Poultry, and holding all the approaches, would be difficult to dislodge, presenting as it did a solid phalanx to any opposing force which, owing to the comparative narrowness of the converging thoroughfares, would of necessity be compelled to present a somewhat narrow front to the rebel army. Queen Victoria Street, it is true, being broad, would allow the soldiery to come on in companies, forming an attacking line of formidable length. This, however, the Dumpling's second in command had realised, for, immediately facing Queen Victoria Street, he placed the pick of the rebel riflemen. No sooner did the troop of cavalry, which was advancing upon the rioters, come within range, than the barrels of the riflemen, and the saddles of the front row of soldiery, were almost simultaneously emptied. After each volley Queen Victoria Street was for a moment blocked by a line of dead and dying soldiers and horses, but no sooner was the opposing line re-formed, and ready to come on, before another volley from the rebel riflemen emptied every saddle again. In Queen Victoria Street, at least, the victory of the rebels was complete, and what happened to the troops in Queen Victoria Street, happened upon a smaller scale to the police and to the military who attempted to disperse the mob by making charges by way of Cheapside, Lombard Street, and the other narrower approaches. Recognising the hopelessness of the position, and anxious to husband their strength for the final struggle, the officers in command of the police and of the military gave the word for withdrawal. In this withdrawal the mob saw a tacit admission of defeat, and became more reckless, more eager for destruction, more difficult of organisation. Freed from the restraining and controlling influence of the Dumpling, it swept along Cheapside to St. Paul's and down Ludgate Hill, no longer an organised rising with a definite end in view, but a rabble of reckless ruffians, ready and greedy to rob, to rape, to wreck, and to destroy. At Ludgate Circus it divided, part going westward by way of Fleet Street and the Strand, another part by way of St. Bride Street, and yet another by the Embankment.