hoping to attract the attention of someone in the compound. As he pounded the steps, he shouted, “Get the main guard out.” At this point, Captain Thomas Preston and his men moved towards Private White at the Common House, placing themselves in a defensive position with Private White in front of the crowd of rioters. Captain Preston, in his deposition of March 12, 1770, stated: "I allowed my troops to proceed to the place where the unfortunate affair took place without loading any of their guns, and I never gave any 'order to load them'. By this time Captain Preston and his men had moved towards White with fixed bayonets and by all accounts only Private White had a weapon loaded and ready to fire. As the British soldiers held their ground, several eyewitnesses reported that bells were rung and a call for "fire" was made. In those days, fire was an enemy fought by an entire city. As the bells rang, many Boston residents came out of their homes onto King Street, asking where the fire was. Of course, when they arrived, they were told that there was no fire, but that they had been summoned because the British soldiers were harassing some local citizens. When the citizens realized what was happening, they joined the already growing crowd and continued to mock the British soldiers. However, most of the people who came to fight the fires brought with them buckets, sticks and clubs to knock down and try to put out the fire, according to Thomas Knight interviewed at the trial. Here now, with no fire to fight, stood a frustrated and angry mob of about two hundred people, now armed with sticks and clubs, facing Captain Preston and his soldiers. The crowd not only began shouting at the colonist, but he also referred to a respected British lawyer whose reputation was neither tainted nor tainted by the Revolution. The first thing Adam did was cite four ideas or bases upon which Chief Justice Hale based his decisions when it came to someone's life. 1) “It is always safer to err in acquitting than in punishing on the part of mercy, rather than on the part of justice.” 2) “it is safer to sin on the gentler side, that of mercy.” 3) “the best rule, in doubtful cases, is to lean more towards acquittal than towards conviction and 4) “it is better that five guilty people escape unpunished, rather than one innocent person die”. From the beginning, doubt was sown in the minds of each of those who weighed on the fate of these eight soldiers. They had heard the testimony of nearly sixty people telling them person after person that the soldiers had fired on a crowd of people.