was doubling forward up the road in two columns.
Fergus saw them and fumed impatiently, trying to force his captive to his feet, but the man was hardly capable of sitting unaided.
The twenty constables stopped at fifty yards and one rank knelt, while the others fell in behind them, rifles at the ready. The command carried clearly. One round. Warning fireV The volley of musketry crashed out. Aimed purposely high, it hissed and cracked over the heads of the strikers, and they scattered into the ditch.
For one moment, Fergus hesitated and then he pointed the pistol into the air and fired three shots in rapid succession. It was the agreed signal, and instantly a storm of rifle fire crashed from the silent cottages along the road, the muzzle flashes of the hidden rifles dull angry red in the dawn. The fire swept the road.
Fergus hesitated a second only and then he lowered the pistol. It was a Webley . 45 5, a British officer's sidearm. The police Captain saw his intention in his eyes, the merciless glare of the stooping eagle, and he mumbled a plea through his mangled lips, trying to lift hands to protect his face.
The pistol shot was lost in the storm of rifle fire from the cottages, and the answering police fire as they fell back in confusion into the dip.
The heavy lead bullet smashed into the Captain's open pleading mouth, knocking the two front teeth out of his upper jaw, and then it plunged on into his throat and exited through the back of his skull in a scarlet burst of blood and bone chips, clubbing him down into the dirt of the roadway while Fergus turned and darted away under the cover of the hedge.
Only at Fordsburg were the police raids repelled, for at the other centres there had been no warning, and the strikers had not taken even the most elementary precautions of placing sentries.
At the Trades Hall in Johannesburg, almost the entire leadership of the strike was assembled, meeting with the other unions who had not yet come out, but were considering sympathetic action. There were representatives of the Boilermakers Society, the Building and Allied Trades, the Typographical Union and half a dozen others, together with the most dynamic and forceful of the strikers. Harry Fisher was there, Andrews and Ben Caddy, and all the others.
The police were into the building while they were deep in dialectic, debating the strategy of the class struggle, and the first warning they had was the thunderous charge of booted feet on the wooden staircase.
Harry Fisher was at the head of the conference table, slumped down in his chair with his tangled wiry hair hanging on to his forehead and his thumbs hooked in his braces, his sleeves rolled up around the thick hairy arms.
He was the only one to move. He leaned across the table and grabbed the rubber stamp of the High Council of Action and thrust it into his pocket.
As the rifle butts smashed in the lock of the Council Chamber, he leapt to his feet and thrust his shoulder into the shuttered casement. It burst open and, with surprising nimbleness for such a big man, he slipped through it.
The facade of the Trades Hall was heavily encrusted with fancy cast-iron grille work, and it gave him handholds. Like a bull gorilla, he swarmed up on to the third floor ledge and worked his way to the corner.
Below him he heard the crash of overturning furniture, the loud challenges of the arresting officers and the outraged cries of the labour leaders.
With his back pressed to the wall and his hands spread out to balance himself, Harry Fisher peered around the corner into the main street. It swarmed with uniformed police, and more squads were marching up briskly. An officer was directing men to the side alleys to surround the building, and Harry Fisher drew back quickly and looked around him for escape.
It was senseless to re-enter another window, for the whole building was noisy with the tramp of feet and shouted orders.
Fifteen feet below him was the roof of a bottle store and general dealer's shop, but the alleyway between was ten feet wide and the roof of galvanized corrugated iron.
If he jumped, the noise he would make on landing would bring police running from all directions, yet he could not stay where he was. Within minutes the building would be surrounded.
He eched sideways to the nearest downpipe and began to climb. He reached the overhang of the roof and had to lean out to get a grip on the rim of the guttering, then he kicked his feet clear and hung from his arms. The drop of fifty feet below him sucked at his heels, and the guttering creaked and sagged perceptively under his weight, but he drew himself up on his arms, wheezing and straining until he could hook one elbow over the gutter and wriggle the rest of his body up and over the edge.
Still panting from the effort, he crawled slowly round the steeply gabled roof and peered down into the main street, just as the police began hustling the strike leaders out of the front doors.
Fifty helmeted constables with sloped rifles had formed a hollow square in the road, and the strikers were pushed into it; some of them bare-headed and in their shirtsleeves.
Already a crowd was forming on the sidewalks, and every minute it swelled, as the news was shouted from door to door and the curious hurried from every alleyway.
Harry Fisher counted the prisoners as they were brought out and the total was twenty before the mood of the crowd began changing. That's it, comrades, Harry Fisher grunted, and wished he could have been down there to lead them. They surged angrily up to the police lines, calling to the prisoners and hissing and booing the officer who ordered them, through a speaking trumpet, to disperse.
Mounted police wheeled into line, pushing the crowd back and as the last prisoner was led out, the escort stepped out, maintaining its rigid box-formation which enclosed the dejected huddle of strikers, Somebody began to sing the Red Flag, but the voices that joined in were thin and tuneless, and the escort moved off towards the fort, carrying away not only most of the strike leadership but all of its moderate faction, those who had so far counselled against violence, against criminal activity and bloody revolution.
Harry Fisher watched them go with a rising sense of triumph. In one stroke he had been given a band of martyrs for the cause and had all serious opposition to his extreme views swept away. He had also in his hip pocket the seal of the Action Committee. He smiled a thin, humourless grin and settled down on the canted roof-top to wait for nightfall.
