They halt upon the way to drag Gabriel Varden from his shop, in order to compel him to pick the lock of the prison gate. They march him at the head of the mob to the jail. They find that their visit was not wholly unexpected, "for the governor's house, which fronted the street, was strongly barricaded, the wicket of the prison gate was closed up, and at no loophole or grating was any person to be seen." The governor, inspecting the mob from the roof of his house, is summoned to surrender his charge. He refuses. The rabble call on the locksmith to pick the locks. He defies them, and is dragged away barely in time to save his life by Joe Willets and Edward Chester, who are in the mob in disguise. Then the assault on the jail begins.
"Hammers began to rattle on the walls, and every man strove to reach the prison and be among the foremost rank. Fighting their way through the press and struggle as desperately as if they were in the midst of the enemies rather than their own friends, the two men retreated with the blacksmith between them, and dragged him through the very heart of the concourse.
"And now the strokes begin to fall like hail upon the gate and on the strong building; for those who could not reach the door spent their fierce rage on any thing, even on the great blocks of stone, which shivered their weapons into fragments, and made their hands and arms tingle as if the walls were active in their resistance and dealt them back their blows. The clash of the iron ringing upon iron mingled with the deafening tumult, and sounded high above it, as the great sledge-hammers rattled on the nailed and plated door; the sparks flew off in showers; men worked in gangs, and at short intervals relieved each other, that all their strength might be devoted to the work; but there stood the portal still, as grim and dark and as strong as ever, and, saving for the dints on its shattered surface, quite unchanged.
"While some brought all their energies to bear upon this toilsome task, and some, rearing ladders against the prison, tried to clamber to the summit of the walls they were too short to scale; and some, again, engaged a body of police, and beat them back and trod them under foot by force of numbers; others besieged the house on which the gaoler had appeared, and, driving in the door, brought out his furniture and piled it up against the prison gate to make a low fire which should burn it down. As soon as this device was understood, all those who had labored hitherto cast down their tools and helped to swell the heap, which reached half way across the street, and was so high that those who threw more fuel on the top got up by ladders. When all the keeper's goods were flung upon this costly pile to the last fragment, they smeared it with pitch and tar and rosin they had brought, and sprinkled it with turpentine. To all the woodwork round the prison doors they did the like, leaving not a joist or a beam untouched. This infernal christening performed, they fired the pile with lighted matches and with blazing tow, and then stood by and waited the result.