Page:America Fallen!.djvu/123

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Bombardment of New York
111

tion met and swirled in the side streets and turned in increasing volume to Broadway—seeking a means of quick escape by the Subway. In a few minutes the streets were filled from building line to building line with a frantic mob, so tightly jammed that all movement ceased. Then, as shell after shell burst far above, huge masses of masonry came hurtling down upon that hapless mob, killing and wounding the unfortunates where they stood, held fast. And still the terror-stricken pushed their way, with that fatal accumulation of pressure which marks a fleeing mob, out of every office-building entrance; the emerging mass acting with the cumulative effect of a hydraulic ram upon the already compacted mass in the streets. Under that fatal pressure the weak went down, ribs were crushed in, breathing was no longer possible. By the hundred, the people died where they fell.