Part 63 (1/2)
The mob in the street had not ventured on anything more offensive than jeers and curses, but when Carpenter's command reached 32d Street it was a.s.sailed in a new and deadly manner. Rioters, well provided with stones and brick-bats, had stationed themselves on the roofs, and, deeming themselves secure, began to rain the missiles on the column below, which formed but too conspicuous a mark. This was a new and terrible danger which Merwyn had not antic.i.p.ated, and he wondered how Carpenter would meet the emergency. Comrades were falling around him, and a stone grazed his shoulder which would have brained him had it struck his head.
Their leader never hesitated a moment. The command, ”Halt, charge those houses, brain every devil that resists,” rang down the line.
The crowd on the sidewalk gave way before the deeply incensed and resolute officers of the law. Merwyn, with a half-dozen others, seized a heavy pole which had been cut down in order to destroy telegraphic communication, and, using it as a ram, crashed in the door of a tall tenement-house on the roof of which were a score of rioters, meantime escaping their missiles as by a miracle. Rus.h.i.+ng in, paying no heed to protests, and clubbing those who resisted, he kept pace with the foremost. In his left hand, however, he carried his trusty revolver, for he did not propose to be a.s.sa.s.sinated by skulkers in the dark pa.s.sage-ways. Seeing a man levelling a gun from a dusky corner, he fired instantly, and man and gun dropped.
As the guardians of the law approached the scuttle, having fought their way thither, the ruffians stood ready to hurl down bricks, torn from the chimneys; but two or three well-aimed shots cleared the way, and the policemen were on the roof, bringing down a man with every blow. One brawny fellow rushed upon Merwyn, but received such a stroke on his temple that he fell, rolled off the roof, and struck the pavement, a crushed and shapeless ma.s.s.
The a.s.saults upon the other houses were equally successful, but the fight was a severe one, and was maintained for nearly an hour.
The mob was appalled by the fate of their friends, and looked on in sullen, impotent anger.
Having cleared the houses, the police re-formed in the street, and marched away to other turbulent districts.
Only the military were left, and had formed about a block further to the north. Beyond the feeble demonstration of the invalid corps the rioters, as yet, had had no experience with the soldiery. That policemen would use their clubs was to them a matter of course, but they scarcely believed that cannon and musketry would be employed.
Moreover, they were maddened and reckless that so many of their best and bravest had been put hors de combat. The brief paralysis caused by the remorseless clubs of the police pa.s.sed, and like a sluggish monster, the mob, aroused to sudden fury, pressed upon the soldiery, hurling not only the vilest epithets but every missile on which they could lay their hands. Colonel O'Brien, in command for the moment, rode through the crowd, supposing he could overawe them by his fearless bearing; but they only scoffed at him, and the attack upon his men grew more bold and reckless.
The limit of patience was pa.s.sed. ”Fire!” he thundered, and the howitzers poured their deadly canister point-blank into the throng.
At the same time the soldiers discharged their muskets. Not only men, but women fell on every side, one with a child in her arms.
A warfare in which women stand an equal chance for death and wounds is a terrible thing, and yet this is usually an inseparable feature of mob-fighting. However, setting aside the natural and instinctive horror at injuring a woman, the depraved creatures in the streets were deserving of no more sympathy than their male abettors in every species of outrage. They did their utmost to excite and keep alive the pa.s.sions of the hour. Many were armed with knives, and did not hesitate to use them, and when stronger hands broke in the doors of shops and dwellings they swarmed after,--the most greedy and unscrupulous of plunderers. If a negro man, woman, or child fell into their hands, none were more brutal than the uns.e.xed hags of the mob.
If on this, and other occasions, they had remained in their homes they would not have suffered, nor would the men have been so ferocious in their violence. They were the first to yield to panic, however, and now their shrieks were the loudest and their efforts to escape out of the deadly range of the guns the most frantic.
In a few moments the avenue was cleared, and the military marched away, leaving the dead and wounded rioters where they had fallen, as the police had done before. Instantly the friends of the sufferers gathered them up and carried them into concealment.
This feature, from the first, was one of the most marked characteristics of the outbreak. The number of rioters killed and wounded could be only guessed at approximately, for every effort was made to bury the bodies secretly, and keep the injured in seclusion until they either died or recovered. Almost before a fight was over the prostrate rioters would be spirited away by friends or relatives on the watch.
The authorities were content to have it so, for they had no place or time for the poor wretches, and the police understood that they were to strike blows that would incapacitate the recipients for further mischief.
In the same locality which had witnessed his morning fight, Colonel O'Brien, later in the day, met a fate too horrible to be described.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
DESPERATE FIGHTING.
HAVING again reached police headquarters, Merwyn rested but a short time and then joined a force of two hundred men under Inspector Dilkes, and returned to the same avenue in which he had already incurred such peril. The mob, having discovered that it must cope with the military as well as the police, became eager to obtain arms. It so happened that several thousand carbines were stored in a wire factory in Second Avenue, and the rioters had learned the fact. Therefore they swarmed thither, forced an entrance, and began to arm themselves and their comrades. A despatch to headquarters announced the attack at its commencement, and the force we have named was sent off in hot haste to wrest from the mob the means of more effective resistance. Emerging into the avenue from 21st Street, Dilkes found the thoroughfare solid with rioters, who, instead of giving way, greeted the police with bitter curses. Hesitating not a moment on account of vast inequality of numbers, the leader formed his men and charged. The mob had grown reckless with every hour, and it now closed on the police with the ferocity of a wild beast. A terrible hand-to-hand conflict ensued, and Merwyn found himself warding off and giving blows with the enemy so near that he could almost feel their hot, tainted breath on his cheek, while horrid visages inflamed with hate and fury made impressions on his mind that could not easily pa.s.s away. It was a close, desperate encounter, and the scorching July sun appeared to kindle pa.s.sion on either side into tenfold intensity. While the police were disciplined men, obeying every order and doing nothing at random, they WERE men, and they would not have been human if anger and thoughts of vengeance had not nerved their arms as they struck down ruffians who would show no more mercy to the wounded or captured than would a man-eating tiger.
Since the mob would not give way, the police cut a b.l.o.o.d.y path through the throng, and forced their way like a wedge to the factory.
Their orders were to capture all arms; and when a rioter was seen with a carbine or a gun of any kind, one or more of the police would rush out of the ranks and seize it, then fight their way back.
By the time they reached the factory so many of the mob had been killed or wounded, and so many of their leaders were dead or disabled, that it again yielded to panic and fled. One desperate leader, although already bruised and bleeding, had for a time inspired the mob with much of his own reckless fury, and was left almost alone by his fleeing companions. His courage, which should have been displayed in a better cause, cost him dear, for a tremendous blow sent him reeling against a fence, the sharp point of one of the iron pickets caught under his chin, and he hung there unheeded, impaled and dying. He was afterwards taken down, and beneath his soiled overalls and filthy s.h.i.+rt was a fair, white skin, clad in ca.s.simere trousers, a rich waistcoat, and the finest of linen.
His delicate, patrician features emphasized the mystery of his personality and action.
When all resistance in the street was overcome, there still remained the factory, thronged with armed and defiant rioters. Dilkes ordered the building to be cleared, and Merwyn took his place in the storming party. We shall not describe the scenes that followed.
It was a strife that differed widely from Lane's cavalry charge on the lawn of a Southern plantation, with the eyes of fair women watching his deeds. Merwyn was not taking part with thousands in a battle that would be historic as Strahan and Blauvelt had done at Gettysburg. Every element of romance and martial inspiration was wanting. It was merely a life-and-death encounter between a handful of policemen and a grimy, desperate band of ruffians, cornered like rats, and resolved to sell their lives dearly.