There had been wild doings in Douglas since the Chief Constable's
visit to Government House. Stones had been thrown and windows
broken. At length the Mayor, not without personal risk, had read the
Riot Act from the steps of the Town Hall.
The result had been the reverse of what the Governor expected. The
police, a small force, had charged the mob with their batons, but
they had soon been overpowered. Then the soldiers from Castletown, a
little company of eighty, had attempted to intimidate the crowd with
their rifles, but twice as many stalwart fishermen, coming up behind,
had disarmed them. After that the people had surged through the
streets in delirious triumph.
At ten o'clock the throng was densest outside Government Office,
which stands midway on the steep declivity of the Prospect Hill. The
police and the soldiers had as much as they could do to guard the
doors of the building. The space in front of it was packed with
people of both sexes and all ages. They were squirming about like
worms on an upturned sod. There were loud shouts and derisive cries.
"Down with the Governor!"
"Tell him the steamer leaves for England at nine in the morning."
Suddenly, with the rapidity of a desert wind, word went through the
crowd that mounted soldiers from England had just been landed at the
pier, and were riding up the principal thoroughfares, driving
everything before them.
A cold fear came, culminating in terror. Presently the cavalry were
seen to turn the bottom of the hill. They were swinging the flats of
their swords to scatter the crowd. The people screamed and ran in
frantic haste to the parapets on either side of the street. In a
moment the broad space in front of Government Office was clear.
Clear, save for one tiny object. It was a child, a little girl of
four, who had been clinging to her mother's skirts and in the
scramble had lost her hold of them.
The cavalry were now coming up the hill at a gallop and the little
one's danger was seen by all.
"Save the child," people shouted, and more than one ran out a few
paces and then ran back, for the horses seemed to be almost upon
them. The mother was screaming and trying to break into the open,
but women were holding her back.
At that moment a man, whom nobody recognised at first, pushed his way
through the crowd with powerful arms, and darted out in the direction
of the child.
"Come back; you'll be killed," cried someone, but the others held
their breath.
At the next instant the man was lost to sight in the midst of the
cavalry. In the confused movement that followed one of the horses
was seen to rear and swing aside, as if it had been struck in the
mouth by a strong hand.
When the crowd were conscious of what happened next the cavalry had
galloped past, with its clang of hoofs and rattle of steel, and the
broad space was once more empty.
Empty save for the man. His head was bare, his hand was bleeding,
and the skirt of the loose overcoat he wore was torn as if a sword
had accidentally slashed it. But in his arms was the child--unhurt
and untouched.
Then the people saw who he was. He was the Deemster, and they
crowded about him. He gave the little one back to its mother, who
had a still younger child at her breast, and was too breathless from
fright to thank him.
He tried to conceal himself in the crowd, but they followed him--down
the hill to Athol Street, where the Court-house is--a long train,
chiefly of women and children, with wet eyes and open mouths, crying
to him and to each other,
"The Deemster! God bless him!"
They thought he was going to the Court-house to sit on the bench as
Judge, but when he came to the big portico he passed it, and, turning
down a side street, he stopped at a little black door and knocked.
The door was opened by a police sergeant who was not wearing his
helmet. The Deemster stepped into the vault-like place within and
the door was closed behind him.
It was the Douglas prison.