The swift reaction left me weak as a child, yet conscious, able to realize all within range of my vision.

My fingers still gripped the carbine barrel, and dripping blood half blinded me.

Between where I lay and the foot of the stairs were bodies heaped together, dead and motionless most of them, but with here and there a wounded man struggling to extricate himself.

They were clad in gray and blue, but with clothing so torn, so blackened by powder, or reddened by blood, as to be almost indistinguishable.

The walls were jabbed and cut, the stair-rail broken, the chandelier crushed into fragments.