The desperate nature of this first conflict can be imagined, when, out of the fourteen men composing Sergeant McCredie's original force, only five were left unwounded. At the very outset of the charge, the sergeant himself was struck with an iron bar on the wrist, which rendered the arm almost useless. In the retreat, four men assailed him at once. Knocking down two, he took refuge in the house of a German, when a young woman told him to jump between two mattresses. He did so, and she covered him up just as his pursuers forced their way in. Streaming through the house from cellar to garret, they came back, and demanded of the young woman where the man was hid. She quietly said he had escaped by the rear of the house. Believing she told the truth, they took their departure. Officer Bennett was knocked down three times before he ceased fighting. The last time he was supposed to be dead, when the wretches began to rob him even of his clothing, stripping him of every article except his drawers. He was soon after taken up and carried to St. Luke's Hospital, and placed in the dead-house, where he lay for several hours. When the sad news was brought to his wife, she hastened to the hospital, and fell weeping on the lifeless form of her husband. She could not believe he was dead, and laying her hand on his heart, found to her joy that it pulsated. She immediately flew to the officials of the hospital, and had him brought in, and restoratives applied. He revived, but remained unconscious for three days, while the riot raged around him. Officer Travis, in the flight down the avenue, saw, as he looked back, that his foremost pursuer had a pistol. Wheeling, he knocked him down, and seized the pistol, but before he could use it, a dozen clubs were raining blows upon him, which brought him to the ground. The infuriated men then jumped upon him, knocking out his teeth, breaking his jaw-bone and right hand, and terribly mutilating his whole body. Supposing him to be dead, they then stripped him stark naked and left him on the pavement, a ghastly spectacle to the passers-by. Officer Phillips ran the gauntlet almost unharmed, but was pursued block after block by a portion of the mob, till he reached Thirty-ninth street. Here he attempted to enter a house, but it was closed against him. As he turned down the steps, one of the pursuers, in soldier's clothes, levelled his musket at him and fired. Missing his aim, he clubbed his weapon, and dealt him a deadly blow. Phillips caught the musket as it descended, and wrenching it from his grasp, knocked the fellow down with it, and started and ran across some vacant lots to Fortieth Street. But here he was headed off by another portion of the mob, in which was a woman, who made a lunge at him with, a shoemaker's knife. The knife missed his throat, but passed through his ear. Drawing it back, she made another stab, piercing his arm. He was now bleeding profusely, and his death seemed inevitable,