The fun indeed was fast and furious.

The whole scene on the hustings, as well as around them, seemed to me one seething mass of senseless but good-humoured hustling and confusion.

Suddenly in the midst of the uproar an ominous cracking was heard, and in the next minute the hustings swayed and came down with a crash, heaping together in a confused mass all the two or three hundreds of human beings who were on the huge platform.

Some few were badly hurt.

But my brother and I being young and active, and tolerably stout fellows, soon extricated ourselves, regained our legs, and found that we were none the worse.
Then we began to look to our neighbours.