The Four White Days | Page 7

crunch of the snow and the sound of heavy breathing
could be heard.
Near Euston Station the first sign of resistance was encountered. A
force of eighty police barred the way. The mob closed in. There was no
hot blood, no more than grim determination with a dash of sardonic
humour in it. A head or two was broken by the thrashing staves, but the
odds were too great. In five minutes the whole posse of constables was
disarmed, made secure by their own handcuffs and taken along as
honoured prisoners of war. Perhaps their sympathies were with the mob,
for they made nothing like so fine a fight of it as is usually the case.
Up by King's Cross Station a still larger force of police had massed,
and here there was some considerable amount of bloodshed. But there
were thousands of men within easy distance of the fray, and the white
silence of the place became black with swaying figures and the noise of

turmoil carried far. Finally the police were beaten back, squeezed in
between two vastly superior forces and surrendered at discretion.
The victory was easier than it seemed, for obviously the constables had
no heart for the work before them. Not a few of them were thinking of
their own firesides, and that they would be better off in the ranks of
their antagonists.
Meanwhile, many of the local municipalities were being urged to call
out the military. With one accord they declined to do anything of the
kind. It was the psychological moment when one touch of nature makes
the whole world akin. In the House of Commons, to the agonised
appeal of Hayes and his partner, the Secretary for War coldly preferred
to be unable to interfere unless the Mayor of this or that borough
applied for assistance after reading the Riot Act. The matter was in the
hands of the police, who would know how to act upon an emergency.
Hustled and bustled and pushed good-naturedly, Fisher and his
colleague found themselves at length beyond a pair of huge gates that
opened into a yard just beyond Euston Station. There was a large
square area and beyond three small mountains of coal, all carefully
stacked in the usual way. Before the welcome sight the stolid
demeanour of the two thousand men who had raided the yard fairly
broke down. They threw up their hands and laughed and cheered. They
stormed the office of the big coal company, who were ostensible
owners of all that black wealth, and dragged the clerks into the yard.
From behind came the crash and rattle of the wheel-less carts as they
were dragged forward.
"No cause to be frightened," the man in command explained. "We're
here to buy that coal, one or two or three hundredweight each, as the
case may be, and you can have your money in cash or vouchers, as you
please. But we're going to have the stuff and don't you forget it. You
just stand by the gates and check us out. You'll have to guess a bit, but
that won't be any loss to you. And the price is eighteen pence a
hundredweight."
The three clerks grinned uneasily. At the same moment the same

strange scene was being enacted in over a hundred other coalyards.
Three or four hundred men were already swarming over the big mound,
there was a crash and a rattle as the huge blocks fell, the air was filled
with a grimy, gritty black powder, every face was soon black with it.
Very soon there was a steady stream away from the radius of the coal
stacks. A big stream of coal carts went crunching over the hard, frozen
snow pulled by one or two or three men according to the load, or how
many had co-operated, and as they went along they sang and shouted in
their victory. It was disorderly, it was wrong, it was a direct violation of
the law, but man makes laws for man.
Gough and Fisher, passing down parallel with Euston Road, presently
found themselves suddenly in the thick of an excited mob. The doors of
a wharf had been smashed in, but in the centre of the yard stood a
resolute knot of men who had affixed a hose pipe to one of the water
mains and defied the marauders with vigorous invective. Just for a
moment there was a pause. The idea of being drenched from head to
foot with a thermometer verging upon zero was appalling. These men
would have faced fire, but the other death, for death it would mean, was
terrible.
"Does that chap want to get murdered?" Fisher exclaimed. "If he does
that, they will tear him to pieces. I say, sir, are you mad?"
He pressed