who had lived, and lived well, by speculation in cotton for years, surged around the great pediment adorned by its allegorical group of sculpture, and saw each moment their fortunes falling away like ice in the sunshine.
Thus trade in Lancashire—cotton, wool, iron, and corn—was, in the course of one single morning, utterly paralysed, all awaiting the decision of Manchester.
Thousands were already face to face with financial disaster, even in those first moments of the alarm.
The hours passed slowly. What was Manchester doing? Her decision was now awaited with bated breath throughout the whole of Lancashire and Yorkshire.
In Manchester, the Courier, the Daily Mail, and the several other journals kept publishing edition after edition, not only through the day, but also through the night. Presses were running unceasingly, and hour after hour were printed accounts of the calm and orderly way in which the enemy were completing their unopposed landing at Goole, Grimsby, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, King's Lynn, and on the Blackwater.
Some British destroyers had interfered with the German plans at the latter place, and two German warships had been sunk, the Courier reported. But full details were not yet forthcoming.
There had been a good deal of skirmishing in the neighbourhood of Maldon, and again near Harleston, on the Suffolk border. The town of Grimsby had been half destroyed by fire, and the damage at Hull had been enormous. From a timber-yard there the wind had, it seemed, carried the flames across to the Alexandra Dock, where some stores had ignited and a quantity of valuable shipping in the dock had been destroyed at their moorings. The Paragon station and hotel had also been burned—probably by people of Hull themselves, in order to drive the German commander from his headquarters.
From Newcastle, Gateshead, and Tynemouth came
