“Go and put back that lorry or you are a dead man.  Go before I count four.  One, two, three, four—­”

A rifle spat at him, and in two undulating movements the man sank on himself and sagged to the ground.

I ran to him with some others, while a woman screamed unmeaningly, all on one strident note.  The man was picked up and carried to a hospital beside the Arts Club.  There was a hole in the top of his head, and one does not know how ugly blood can look until it has been seen clotted in hair.  As the poor man was being carried in, a woman plumped to her knees in the road and began not to scream but to screetch.

At that moment the Volunteers were hated.  The men by whom I was and who were lifting the body, roared into the railings:—­

“We’ll be coming back for you, damn you.”

From the railings there came no reply, and in an instant the place was again desert and silent, and the little green vistas were slumbering among the trees.

No one seemed able to estimate the number of men inside the Green, and through the day no considerable body of men had been seen, only those who held the gates, and the small parties of threes and fours who arrested motors and carts for their barricades.  Among these were some who were only infants—­one boy seemed about twelve years of age.  He was strutting the centre of the road with a large revolver in his small fist.  A motor car came by him containing three men, and in the shortest of time he had the car lodged in his barricade, and dismissed its stupified occupants with a wave of his armed hand.

The knots were increasing about the streets, for now the Bank Holiday people began to wander back from places that were not distant, and to them it had all to be explained anew.  Free movement was possible everywhere in the City, but the constant crackle of rifles restricted somewhat that freedom.  Up to one o’clock at night belated travellers were straggling into the City, and curious people were wandering from group to group still trying to gather information.

I remained awake until four o’clock in the morning.  Every five minutes a rifle cracked somewhere, but about a quarter to twelve sharp volleying came from the direction of Portobello Bridge, and died away after some time.  The windows of my flat listen out towards the Green, and obliquely towards Sackville Street.  In another quarter of an hour there were volleys from Stephen’s Green direction, and this continued with intensity for about twenty-five minutes.  Then it fell into a sputter of fire and ceased.

I went to bed about four o’clock convinced that the Green had been rushed by the military and captured, and that the rising was at an end.

That was the first day of the insurrection.

CHAPTER II

Tuesday

A sultry, lowering day, and dusk skies fat with rain.

I left for my office, believing that the insurrection was at an end.  At a corner I asked a man was it all finished.  He said it was not, and that, if anything, it was worse.