Such was his plan. But as commonly happened to clever Natural Philosophers who have hatched elaborate schemes, he was overtaken by simple events. The crowd, hemmed in under the vault of the Chapel, suddenly pressed him from all sides. It was like being an atom of a gas in Boyle’s Rarefying Engine when the piston was slammed down by a terrific weight. A carriage was trying to force its way through—and succeeding. The crowd, sensing danger not so much from the carriage itself as from its bow-wave of panic, surged out from the dangerous confines of the vault, and Daniel, like a wine-cork tossed into Long Entry Lock, was spewed forth.