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 like wine?  There were others like him in that milling multitude on the river bank across, young men who had come to America with a dream in their hearts, and America had done this to them.  Or had she?  She had taken them in, but they were not her own, and now, since she would not take them, they would take her.  Was that it?  Was it that America had made them her servants, but not her children?  He did not know.

* * * * *

Robbed of the city proper, the mob turned on the mill district it had invaded.  Its dream of lust and greed was over, but it could still destroy.

Like a battle charge, as indeed it was, the mounted city and state police crossed the bridge.  It was followed by the state troops on foot, by city policemen in orderly files, and then by the armed citizens.  The bridge vibrated to the step of marching men, going out to fight for their homes.  The real battle was fought there, around the Cardew mills, a battle where the loyalists were greatly outnumbered, and where the rioters fought, according to their teaching, with every trick they could devise.  Posted in upper windows they fired down from comparative safety; ambulances crossed and re-crossed the bridges.  The streets were filled with rioting men, striking out murderously with bars and spikes.  Fires flamed up and burned themselves out.  In one place, eight blocks of mill-workers’ houses, with their furnishings, went in a quarter of an hour.