hey found the bridge barricaded on the far side, however,
that the lion bared its teeth and snarled. Temporarily checked by the
play of machine guns which swept the bridge and kept it clear for a
time, they commenced wild, wasteful firing, from the bridge-head and
from along the Cardew wharves. Their leaders were prepared, and sent
snipers into the bridge towers, but the machine guns continued to fire.

That the struggle would be on the bridge Doyle and his Council had
anticipated from the reports of the night before. They were prepared
to take a heavy loss on the bridges, but they had not prepared for the
thing that defeated them; that as the mob is braver than the individual,
so also it is more cowardly.

Pushed forward from the rear and unable to retreat through the dense
mass behind that was every moment growing denser, a few hundreds
found themselves facing the steady machine-gun fire from behind the
barricades, and unable either to advance or to retire. Thus trapped,
they turned on their own forces behind them, and tried to fight their
way to safety, but the inexorable pressure kept on, and the defenders,
watching and powerless, saw men fling themselves from the bridges and
disappear in the water below, rather than advance into the machine-gun
zone. The guns were not firing into the rioters, but before them, to
hold them back, and into that leaden stream there were no brave spirits
to hurl themselves.

The trapped men turned on their own and battled for escape. With the
same violence which had been directed toward the city they now fought
each other, and the bridge slowly cleared. But the mob did not disperse.

It spread out on the bank across, a howling, frustrated, futile mass,
disorganized and demoralized, which fired its useless guns across the
river, which seethed and tossed and struggled, and spent itself in its
own wild fury. And all the time cool-eyed men, on the wharves across,
watched and waited for the time to attack.

"They're sick at their stomachs now," said an old army sergeant,
watching, to Willy Cameron. "The dirty devils! They'll be starting their
filthy work over there soon, and that's the zero hour."

Willy Cameron nodded. He had seen one young Russian boy with a
child-like face venture forward alone into the fire zone and drop. He
still lay there, on the bridge. And all of Willy Cameron was in revolt.
What had he been told, that boy, that had made him ready to pour out
his young life lik