Only the last-mentioned pair were handcuffed, and they were
the only persons whom the constables thought necessary to lock up, the
compartments in which the other persons sat being left open.
At half-past three o'clock the van drove off, closely followed by the
cab containing the balance of the escort. Its route lay through some
of the principal streets, then through the suburbs on the south side,
into the borough of Salford, where the county gaol is situated. In all
about two miles had to be traversed, and of this distance the first
half was accomplished without anything calculated to excite suspicion
being observed; but there was mischief brewing, for all that, and the
crisis was close at hand. Just as the van passed under the railway
arch that spans the Hyde-road at Bellevue, a point midway between
the city police office and the Salford gaol, the driver was suddenly
startled by the apparition of a man standing in the middle of the
road with a pistol aimed at his head, and immediately the astonished
policeman heard himself called upon, in a loud, sharp voice, to "pull
up." At the spot where this unwelcome interruption occurred there
are but few houses; brick-fields and clay-pits stretch away at either
side, and the neighbourhood is thinly inhabited. But its comparative
quiet now gave way to a scene of bustle and excitement so strange
that it seems to have almost paralysed the spectators with amazement.
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