The next step in the terrible tragedy occurred between 2:30 and 5 o’clock Tuesday morning, about four hours after the affair on Dryades Street.  The man hunt, which had been inaugurated soon after Officer Mora had been carried to the station, succeeded in running down Robert Charles, the wounded fugitive, and located him at 2023 4th Street.  It was nearly 2 o’clock in the morning when a large detail of police surrounded the block with the intent to kill Charles on sight.  Capt.  Day had charge of the squad of police.  Charles, the wounded man, was in his house when the police arrived, fully prepared, as results afterward showed, to die in his own home.  Capt.  Day started for Charles’s room.  As soon as Charles got sight of him there was a flash, a report, and Day fell dead in his tracks.  In another instant Charles was standing in the door, and seeing Patrolman Peter J. Lamb, he drew his gun, and Lamb fell dead.  Two other officers, Sergeant Aucoin and Officer Trenchard, who were in the squad, seeing their comrades, Day and Lamb, fall dead, concluded to raise the siege, and both disappeared into an adjoining house, where they blew out their lights so that their cowardly carcasses could be safe from Charles’s deadly aim.  The calibre of their courage is well shown by the fact that they concluded to save themselves from any harm by remaining prisoners in that dark room until daybreak, out of reach of Charles’s deadly rifle.  Sergeant Aucoin, who had been so brave a few hours before when seeing the two colored men sitting on the steps, talking together on Dryades Street, and supposing that neither was armed, now showed his true calibre.  Now he knew that Charles had a gun and was brave enough to use it, so he hid himself in a room two hours while Charles deliberately walked out of his room and into the street after killing both Lamb and Day.  It is also shown, as further evidence of the bravery of some of New Orleans’ “finest,” that one of them, seeing Capt.  Day fall, ran seven blocks before he stopped, afterwards giving the excuse that he was hunting for a patrol box.

At daybreak the officers felt safe to renew the attack upon Charles, so they broke into his room, only to find that—­what they probably very well knew—­he had gone.  It appears that he made his escape by crawling through a hole in the ceiling to a little attic in his house.  Here he found that he could not escape except by a window which led into an alley, which had no opening on 4th Street.  He scaled the fence and was soon out of reach.

It was now 5 o’clock Tuesday morning, and a general alarm was given.  Sergeant Aucoin and Corporal Trenchard, having received a new supply of courage by returning daylight, renewed their effort to capture the man that they had allowed to escape in the darkness.  Citizens were called upon to participate in the man hunt and New Orleans was soon the scene of terrible excitement.  Officers were present everywhere, and colored men were arrested