Below them, Sowell Street, glistening with rain and snow, lay empty, but
at either end of it, held back by an army of police, were black masses
of men, and beyond them more men packed upon the tops of taxicabs and
hansoms, stretching as far as the street-lamps showed, and on the roofs
shadowy forms crept cautiously from chimney to chimney; and in the
windows of darkened rooms opposite, from behind barricades of mattresses
and upturned tables, rifles appeared stealthily, to be lost in a sudden
flash of flame. And with these flashes were others that came from
windows and roofs with the report of a bursting bomb, and that, on the
instant, turned night into day, and then left the darkness more dark.
Ford gave a cry of delight.
“They're taking flash-light photographs,” he cried jubilantly. “Well
done, you Pressmen!” The instinct of the reporter became compelling.
“If they're alive to develop those photographs to-night,” he exclaimed
eagerly, “Cuthbert will send them by special messenger, in time to catch
the MAURETANIA and the REPUBLIC will have them by Sunday. I mayn't be
alive to see them,” he added regretfully, “but what a feature for the
Sunday supplement!”
As the eyes of the two prisoners became accustomed to the darkness, they
saw that the street was not, as at first they had supposed, entirely
empty. Directly below them in the gutter, where to approach it was to
invite instant death from Prothero's pistol, lay the dead body of a
policeman, and at the nearer end of the street, not fifty yards from
them, were three other prostrate forms. But these forms were animate,
and alive to good purpose. From a public-house on the corner a row of
yellow lamps showed them clearly. Stretched on pieces of board, and mats
commandeered from hallways and cabs, each of the three men lay at full
length, nursing a rifle. Their belted gray overcoats, flat, visored
caps, and the set of their shoulders marked them for soldiers.
“For the love of Heaven!” exclaimed Ford incredulously, “they've called
out the Guards!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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