We were watching the climax of years of planning and the culminating point of so many lifetimes of idealism, effort, and sacrifice, however mistaken.
We knew they would fail: we knew the penalty of the failure--the traitor's death or the convict's cell; but we were held to the spot, to see just how "dramatic" the fiasco would be.
The very thought was a continuous torture, and it haunted us like a ghost or a madness.
We knew they were our own flesh and blood that had rebelled: it would be strangers who would conquer, and yet we knew that order was right: and this too was a torture-thought.
Hour after hour passed, and when I was not at the window Marsh was on watch, and when he was asleep I mounted my pensive guard.
Incidents never ceased, but the incidents were as nothing compared with the reflections they aroused.
Hour after hour unarmed Volunteers came in from the country, stayed in an hour or so, and then moved out armed. Carts and cars of ammunition and food arrived and gave the password and were admitted. As the early hours of dawn approached we could see milk and bread carts driving up at top speed, the driver with the cold muzzle of a revolver at his ear and his captors seated behind him.
Sometimes flash signals would shoot across the sky, and at others a man at the "Metropole" corner of the G.P.O. would open a basket and release carrier pigeons, so complete was their organization.
At daybreak we found our room covered by a guard, with rifles pointed at our heads, the light shining over their backs full into our faces: but we made no movement, and an hour or so later moved to another portion of the roof.
Next the street was cleared and barbed wire stretched across.
About six o'clock we saw Connolly emerge at the head of a band, and we could hear one of his subordinates call out Mr. Connolly this and Mr. Connolly that, and the commander-in-chief give his orders in a clear, resonant, and fearless voice.
About eight we thought our last hour had come, for, looking towards the base of Nelson's Pillar, we saw men running from a thin blue spiral of smoke rising up, followed by a terrific explosion. They were trying to blow up the monument.
So Tuesday had come, but it found the situation no further advanced: the military had not come: the rebels had had time to entrench and fortify themselves: the city was really fully in their possession: but the battle had begun.