“With the men who had shot the three Germans and my lad Frank I ascended to Waterloo Bridge by the steps from the Embankment, and there we fought our way through the entrance of the huge barricade that had been hastily erected. The riflemen who had so readily responded to Frank’s alarm explained to us that they and their companions, aided by a thousand armed civilians of all kinds, intended to hold the bridge in case the enemy attempted to come southward upon the Surrey side. They told us also that all the bridges were being similarly held by those who had survived the terrible onslaught upon the barricades in the northern suburbs. The Germans were already in the City, the Lord Mayor was a prisoner, and the German flag was flying in the smoke above the War Office, upon the National Gallery, and other buildings. Of all this we were aware, and from the aspect of those fierce, determined-looking men around us we knew that if the enemy’s hordes attempted to storm the bridges they would meet with a decidedly warm reception. “Behind the bridge the multitude pressed on both ways, so that we were stopped close behind the barricade, where I found myself held tightly beside a neat-looking little Maxim, manned by four men in different military uniforms--evidently survivors from the disaster at Epping or at Enfield. This was not the only machine gun, for there were, I saw, four others, so placed that they commanded the whole of Wellington Street, the entrances to the Strand and up to Bow Street. The great crowd in the open space before Somerset House were struggling to get upon the bridge; but news having been brought of bodies of the enemy moving along the Strand from Trafalgar Square, the narrow entrance was quickly blocked up by paving-stones and iron railings, torn up from before some houses in the vicinity.