Wild cheers and shouts broke out when lines like these were read by gaping multitudes. People came hurrying to their doors and windows; drivers of cabs and omnibuses stopped their vehicles, staring, laughing, shouting, questioning, and adding to the general babel and bewilderment. The streets were blocked. The news ran through the town like flame, evoking everywhere unbounded enthusiasm and the wildest joy. The climax was reached when overhead were heard the wind-harps of a fleet of air-ships. Fifty or sixty of the official craft had been repaired and brought into the service of the Phoenix. Sweeping over every district of London, they scattered tens of thousands of cards bearing Renshaw's portrait, and containing the same three-lined announcement that figured on the placards of the leading newspapers. At the same time, throughout the populous provincial centres, as well as in the Capital, similar cards in enormous numbers passed from hand to hand, and were scattered lavishly in every public place. But it was at Whitehall that the interest and excitement culminated. For there, riding through the streets, bare-headed and gravely acknowledging the plaudits of an enormous concourse, Renshaw himself was seen, passing on his way to the House of Commons, supported by General Hartwell and Sir Robert Herrick, and escorted by a jubilant army of the Friends of the Phoenix. The Friends already were in possession of all the Public Departments. Officials who withstood them or protested were quietly but summarily displaced.