converging into Queen Victoria Square, came crowds of all classes eager to see for themselves and learn the truth of the startling rumour. The whole riverside was soon black with the excited populace, but to the astonishment of everyone the motley craft sailed on, taking no notice of us and becoming fewer and fewer, until ships appeared through the grey bank of fog only at intervals.
"One thing was entirely clear. The enemy, whoever they might be, had destroyed all our means of appealing for help, for we could not telephone to the military at York, Pontefract, Richmond, or even to the regimental district headquarters at Beverley. They had gone on to Goole, but would they turn back and attack us?
"The cry was that if they meant to seize Goole they would also seize Hull! Then the terrified crowd commenced to collect timber and iron from the yards, furniture from neighbouring houses, tramway-cars, omnibuses, cabs; in fact, anything they could lay their hands upon to form barricades in the streets for their own protection.
"I witnessed the frantic efforts of the people as they built one huge obstacle at the corner of Queen Street, facing the pier. Houses were ruthlessly entered, great pieces of heavy furniture—wardrobes, pianos, and sideboards—were piled anyhow upon each other. Men got coils of barbed wire, and lashed the various objects together with seamanlike alacrity. Even paving-stones were prised up with pickaxes and crowbars, and placed in position. The women, in deadly terror of the Germans, helped the men in this hastily improvised barrier, which even as I watched grew higher across the street until it reached the height of the first-storey windows in one great heterogeneous mass of every article conceivable—almost like a huge rubbish heap.
"This was only one of many similar barricades . There were others in the narrow Pier Street, in Wellington Street, Castle Street, south of Prince's Dock, in St. John's Street, between Queen's Dock and Prince's Dock, while the bridges over the river Hull were all
