With equal impetuosity, and stimulating each other by loud cries
and shouts, the citizens and common people took up the quarrel on
their side, and encircling Master Graham a hundred deep, forced him
from the gate. In vain he waved the broken sword above his head,
crying that he would die on London's threshold for their sacred
homes. They bore him on, and ever keeping him in the midst, so
that no man could attack him, fought their way into the city.
The clash of swords and roar of voices, the dust and heat and
pressure, the trampling under foot of men, the distracted looks and
shrieks of women at the windows above as they recognised their
relatives or lovers in the crowd, the rapid tolling of alarm-bells,
the furious rage and passion of the scene, were fearful. Those
who, being on the outskirts of each crowd, could use their weapons
with effect, fought desperately, while those behind, maddened with
baffled rage, struck at each other over the heads of those before
them, and crushed their own fellows. Wherever the broken sword was
seen above the people's heads, towards that spot the cavaliers made
a new rush. Every one of these charges was marked by sudden gaps
in the throng where men were trodden down, but as fast as they were
made, the tide swept over them, and still the multitude pressed on
again, a confused mass of swords, clubs, staves, broken plumes,
fragments of rich cloaks and doublets, and angry, bleeding faces,
all mixed up together in inextricable disorder.
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