Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/782

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DEVONSHIRE CHARACTERS

3. He ordered the alarm bell to be pealed and kept ringing, so that the prisoners did not hear the summons to all to go within. This was the real fact.

4. Then, surprised by the ringing of the bell, the prisoners in the several houses ran out, and pressed against the gate fastened with a chain; and one with a bolt or bar broke the chain, and with the pressure of the crowd the gate was burst open, and the prisoners surged forth into the outer or market square, which was also supplied with an iron gate, then open.

5. Shortland thereupon drew up the militia across the yard, and going before the line of soldiers, remonstrated with the prisoners and urged them to retreat; but this they were unable to do, owing to those who had entered the outer yard being pushed forward by those behind.

6. Thereupon he ordered the military to charge with fixed bayonets; and as the prisoners were slow in retiring, he or some one else or the soldiers on their own initiative fired on the crowd, and drove them through the inner gate into the inner yard, where the soldiers were assailed with insulting epithets, and some stones were thrown at them.

7. Some of the military ran up on the platform of the outer wall, and thence enfiladed the flying prisoners. There was no evidence that Shortland had placed these men on the wall before this took place.

8. Shortland then, possibly, retired into the outer yard and busied himself with the wounded, and left the military to do as they thought best in the inner yard, where they continued to fire volleys, driving the frightened prisoners in at the doors of their respective houses, fired in on them huddled together inside through the doorways and windows.

9. Major Joliffe at the time was in the barrack half a