While the men flung themselves on the hard floor, like soldiers on the field of battle, ready to start on duty at the first call, Acting Superintendent Acton and his assistants never closed their eyes, but spent the night in telegraphing, organizing, and preparing for the fiercer fights of next day. Much was to be done to cover and protect a district that reached from Brooklyn to Westchester, and it was an anxious night. They had one consolation, however: though taken unawares, they had at the close of the day come out victors, which gave them confidence in the future, especially as now Brown and his trained soldiers were with them. Some fifteen or twenty policemen had been more or less severely injured, while the number of the killed and wounded of the mob was wholly unknown. Both the dead and maimed were left by the police where they fell, and were almost immediately hurried away by their friends. The destruction of property on this first day, consisted of four buildings on Third Avenue burned, also a block on Broadway between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Streets; two brown-stone dwellings in Lexington Avenue; Allerton's Hotel near Bull's Head; a cottage, corner of Forty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue; the Colored Orphan Asylum, and the armory corner of Twenty-first Street and Second Avenue. CHAPTER XV. Telegraph Bureau.--Its Work.--Skill and Daring and Success of its Force.--Interesting Incidents.--Hairbreadth Escapes.--Detective Force.--Its arduous Labors.--Its Disguises.--Shrewdness, Tact, and Courage.--Narrow Escapes.--Hawley, the Chief Clerk.--His exhausting Labors. One thing Commissioners Acton and Bergen in their consultation settled must be done at all hazards--telegraphic communication must be kept open with the different precincts. Otherwise it would be impossible to concentrate men at any given point, quick enough to arrest the mob before they spread devastation and conflagration far and wide. Every hour gained by a mob in accumulating or organizing its forces, increases the difficulty of dispersing it. The rioters understood this partially, and had acted accordingly; but the rich spoils they had come across during the day, had driven, for the time being, all other thoughts but plunder out of their heads. Some communications had already been destroyed, and the rioters would evidently by morning have their eyes open to the importance of doing this everywhere, and their efforts must be foiled, no matter what the risk or sacrifice might be. They had already cut down over sixty poles, and rendered upwards of twelve miles of wire useless; and how much more would share the same fate the next day, no one could tell. The superintendent and deputy of the Telegraph Bureau, Messrs. Crowley and Polhamus, with the operators mentioned before, were, therefore, set at work this very evening in the storm, to restore the broken lines. This was a perilous undertaking, for if once discovered, their lives would be instantly sacrificed.