Garthwaite and I at that time were trying to make our way westward to get out of the territory of street-fighting, and we were caught right in the thick of it again.  As we came to the corner we saw the howling mob bearing down upon us.  Garthwaite seized my arm and we were just starting to run, when he dragged me back from in front of the wheels of half a dozen war automobiles, equipped with machine-guns, that were rushing for the spot.  Behind them came the soldiers with their automatic rifles.  By the time they took position, the mob was upon them, and it looked as though they would be overwhelmed before they could get into action.

Here and there a soldier was discharging his rifle, but this scattered fire had no effect in checking the mob.  On it came, bellowing with brute rage.  It seemed the machine-guns could not get started.  The automobiles on which they were mounted blocked the street, compelling the soldiers to find positions in, between, and on the sidewalks.  More and more soldiers were arriving, and in the jam we were unable to get away.  Garthwaite held me by the arm, and we pressed close against the front of a building.

The mob was no more than twenty-five feet away when the machine-guns opened up; but before that flaming sheet of death nothing could live.  The mob came on, but it could not advance.  It piled up in a heap, a mound, a huge and growing wave of dead and dying.  Those behind urged on, and the column, from gutter to gutter, telescoped upon itself.  Wounded creatures, men and women, were vomited over the top of that awful wave and fell squirming down the face of it till they threshed about under the automobiles and against the legs of the soldiers.  The latter bayoneted the struggling wretches, though one I saw who gained his feet and flew at a soldier’s throat with his teeth.  Together they went down, soldier and slave, into the welter.

The firing ceased.  The work was done.  The mob had been stopped in its wild attempt to break through.  Orders were being given to clear the wheels of the war-machines.  They could not advance over that wave of dead, and the idea was to run them down the cross street.  The soldiers were dragging the bodies away from the wheels when it happened.  We learned afterward how it happened.  A block distant a hundred of our comrades had been holding a building.  Across roofs and through buildings they made their way, till they found themselves looking down upon the close-packed soldiers.  Then it was counter-massacre.

Without warning, a shower of bombs fell from the top of the building.  The automobiles were blown to fragments, along with many soldiers.  We, with the survivors, swept back in mad retreat.  Half a block down another building opened fire on us.  As the soldiers had carpeted the street with dead slaves, so, in turn, did they themselves become carpet.  Garthwaite and I bore charmed lives.  As we had done before, so again we sought shelter in an entrance.  But he was not to be caught napping this time.  As the roar of the bombs died away, he began peering out.