The crowd broke like a wave, submerging the police for a moment, flooding the street as if a dam had given way. The cabby on his lofty seat, trying to control his frightened horse, looked like a castaway perched on a buoy in an angry ocean. He made the tactical mistake of lashing around him with his whip. In an instant the hansom was over and down, with a crash of splintering glass. The police, edging together, struck right and left with a fury that quite matched the less disciplined rage of the mob. The officers fought their way until there was a ring around the prostrate cab; two of them picked up Mr. Hope, who was helpless with fear and horror, and these two, with the little man between them, surrounded by a squad that stood shoulder to shoulder, simply clove their way through the dense mass to the gates, where the small door in the large gate was quickly opened and shut, with Mr. Hope and one supporting policeman inside. Gibbons, his hat gone, his coat in rags and his face smeared with blood, a wild unkempt figure, rose above the struggling mob, and stood on the top of the fallen cab. “For God’s sake, men,” he screamed, “don’t resist the police! Fallback! Fallback!” He might as well have shouted to the winds. The police laid about them like demons, and the crowd was rapidly falling back, but not because Gibbons ordered them to. In an incredibly short space of time the police in a body marched down the street, and there was none to oppose them. The remnants of what a few minutes before seemed an irresistible force, lay on the pavement and groaned, or leaned against the walls, the more seriously wounded to be taken to the hospitals, the others to the police station. In spite of their defeat in the morning, the men gathered once more about the works in the afternoon, and the threatening crowd was even greater than before, because the evening papers had spread over London startling accounts of the riot, as they called it, and the news had attracted idlers from all parts of the metropolis. The wildest rumours were afloat: the men were going to wreck the works; they were going to loot the bread-shops in Light Street; they had armed themselves and were about to march on Trafalgar Square. With a resolute and desperate leader, there is no saying what they might have attempted; but Gibbons, who had put another coat on his back, and much sticking-plaster on his face, moved about counselling moderation and respect for the law. They would forfeit public sympathy, he said, by resorting to violence; although some of his hearers growled that “a bleedin’ lot o’ good” public sympathy had done for them. “What we want, and what we mean to have,” said Gibbons, “is a word with the owners. They are bound to come out soon.”