Barnaby Rudge: a tale of the Riots of 'eighty eBook

It was not an easy task to draw off such a throng.  If Bedlam gates had been flung wide open, there would not have issued forth such maniacs as the frenzy of that night had made.  There were men there, who danced and trampled on the beds of flowers as though they trod down human enemies, and wrenched them from the stalks, like savages who twisted human necks.  There were men who cast their lighted torches in the air, and suffered them to fall upon their heads and faces, blistering the skin with deep unseemly burns.  There were men who rushed up to the fire, and paddled in it with their hands as if in water; and others who were restrained by force from plunging in, to gratify their deadly longing.  On the skull of one drunken lad—­not twenty, by his looks—­who lay upon the ground with a bottle to his mouth, the lead from the roof came streaming down in a shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting his head like wax.  When the scattered parties were collected, men—­living yet, but singed as with hot irons—­were plucked out of the cellars, and carried off upon the shoulders of others, who strove to wake them as they went along, with ribald jokes, and left them, dead, in the passages of hospitals.  But of all the howling throng not one learnt mercy from, or sickened at, these sights; nor was the fierce, besotted, senseless rage of one man glutted.

Slowly, and in small clusters, with hoarse hurrahs and repetitions of their usual cry, the assembly dropped away.  The last few red-eyed stragglers reeled after those who had gone before; the distant noise of men calling to each other, and whistling for others whom they missed, grew fainter and fainter; at length even these sounds died away, and silence reigned alone.

Silence indeed!  The glare of the flames had sunk into a fitful, flashing light; and the gentle stars, invisible till now, looked down upon the blackening heap.  A dull smoke hung upon the ruin, as though to hide it from those eyes of Heaven; and the wind forbore to move it.  Bare walls, roof open to the sky—­chambers, where the beloved dead had, many and many a fair day, risen to new life and energy; where so many dear ones had been sad and merry; which were connected with so many thoughts and hopes, regrets and changes—­all gone.  Nothing left but a dull and dreary blank—­a smouldering heap of dust and ashes—­the silence and solitude of utter desolation.

Chapter 56

The Maypole cronies, little dreaming of the change so soon to come upon their favourite haunt, struck through the Forest path upon their way to London; and avoiding the main road, which was hot and dusty, kept to the by-paths and the fields.  As they drew nearer to their destination, they began to make inquiries of the people whom they passed, concerning the riots, and the truth or falsehood of the stories they had heard.  The answers went far beyond any intelligence that had spread to quiet Chigwell.