Pistols at dawn as police take on a man of mettle Ned Kelly in chains. On the early morning of June 28, 1880, the police are laying siege to the Glenrowan Inn, believing that after two long years of humiliation, they have the Kelly Gang cornered at last. Unbeknown to them, Joe Byrne has already been shot dead, while Ned Kelly, though wounded and bleeding badly, has slipped through the police cordon in the darkness and, after resting, is capable of making his escape. Can Ned really leave his brother, Dan, and Steve Hart alone? He cannot. With his last remaining strength, just before seven o'clock, Ned raises himself and dons his helmet once more. With a supreme effort, he manages to stand and starts to move back towards the inn. Down the slope near the inn, Constable James Arthur is impatient for the sun to fully rise so he can get some warmth back into his bones. He is just pausing to fill his pipe to have a smoke when he hears movement behind him. Turning, he can see something emerging from the bush and he yells, "Keep back or you will be shot!" All he hears in response is a "rumbling noise." Ned Kelly's armour that kept police guessing as to his identity until Senior Constable John Kelly finally pulled it off. Photo: State Library of Victoria Shocked, disbelieving, the worthy constable looks closer to see the most extraordinary thing he has ever seen. Steadily, the figure approaches and, after first realising it is a man, Arthur then thinks it must be "some madman in the horrors who had put some nail keg on his head." Obviously, it is someone intent on storming the hotel under the headgear's protection, so he sings out to him, "Keep back, you damned fool!" But the figure keeps coming. It cannot be one of the Kelly Gang. They are all inside the inn, not attacking from the rear, surely. The shocked constable yells again, "Keep back, or you will be shot!" But hark, for the figure speaks, albeit in an oddly metallic fashion. "I could shoot you, sonny," it says, even as Arthur sees the figure is pulling back its oilskin coat to reveal its right hand is holding a revolver, with its bloodied left hand coming up in support of it, and now ... taking aim! But the figure can't seem to lift its arm all the way, and the shot tears up the ground halfway between the two. And, of course, many of the other police have now seen the figure too. Or have they? In this first ghostly spectre of dawn, it is not surprising, under the circumstances, that every bit of swirling mist, every emerging shadow, looks exactly like a bushranger coming at them, a harbinger of horror that quickly fades back into the mist, and now they are not sure if this is just one more. The true horror, however, is that this time, despite their earnest hopes, the figure is not their imagination and, all too suddenly, it has emerged from the mist and it really is a bushranger, or ... or ... or is it a MONSTER? For there it is! Coming at the police down the wooded slope to the north of the inn is something that looks, as Sergeant Arthur Steele would describe it, "human, as to its clothes, but altogether inhuman as to its shape and general appearance." Slowly, cumbersomely, the figure keeps moving forward, and it is now regularly firing from what appears to be a big revolver in its right hand. Oh my Lord! After a sleepless night, in which the police have already narrowly escaped death, after all the shooting and all the screams, all the fears that have stalked their night with the promise that one lucky shot from the inn will see them breathe their last, now this. Still the figure keeps coming. Is it even human? In desperation, fearing the end, Constable Arthur manages to quickly roll while still bringing his rifle to bear, aiming directly at the figure's head. The constable pulls the trigger, there is a mighty roar, and he has the grim satisfaction of seeing the figure's head instantly snap backwards, but ... But still it keeps coming. And now it is the monster's turn. For again the figure raises its two hands to fire, and again its revolver roars, hurling up a spume of dirt just a yard in front of Arthur. Somehow, it seems, the beast does not have the strength to fire straight and is using all its energy just to stay upright. Again Arthur fires, "at a white mark, a slit in his helmet," and the figure's head snaps back once more, but still it keeps staggering forward, firing back, but again mercifully missing. "It appeared," one of the police would later recount, "as if he was a fiend with a charmed life." (Not quite. Without the skullcap, which he had left behind, there is no padding to protect Ned's head from the bullet hammer-blows on his helmet. Unseen by his attackers, Ned's head begins to bleed, the blood trickling down his cheek and neck.) Arthur fires a third shot, which misses entirely, and still the figure keeps moving, the right leg forward first, and dragging the left one behind. Cries ring out as the police continue to fire, but all to no effect. "My God, who is that?" railway guard Jesse Dowsett calls to the man nearest him, Constable Patrick Healey. "He is a madman!" comes one response. Soon there are others ... Look out, boys, he is the bunyip! You can't kill it! From the railway platform, the artist for The Australasian Sketcher, Thomas Carrington, watches, mesmerised. He will later recount: "Suddenly we noticed one or two of the men, with their backs turned to the hotel, firing at something in the bush. Presently we noticed a very tall figure in white stalking slowly along in the direction of the hotel. There was no head visible and in the dim light, with the steam rising from the ground, it looked for all the world like the ghost of Hamlet's father with no head, only a very long thick neck ... The figure continued gradually to advance, stopping every now and then, and moving what looked like its headless neck slowly and mechanically round. Shot after shot was fired at it, but without effect, the figure generally replying by tapping the butt end of its revolver against its neck, the blows ringing out with the clearness and distinctiveness of a bell in the morning air. It was the most extraordinary sight I ever saw or read of in my life, and I felt fairly spellbound with wonder ... "Fire away, you buggers," the figure laughs. You cannot hurt me. As the police keep firing, Sergeant Steele regularly hears first the blast from a gun, and then, an instant later, a small clinking sound. Could it be? Is that the explanation? Has this figure got some kind of metallic shield on? Yes, that must be it. Perhaps not so preposterous after all. And now this extraordinary figure is lurching straight for Steele, even as - after being sure he can hear them yelling from the inn - he calls for Steve Hart and his brother Dan. "Come out, boys, and we will lick the lot of them," the figure yells, beckoning to the other two outlaws. Come out and whip the lot of them. Oh, you bastards, we will put the daylight through you. And now the figure seems to be having more trouble holding its revolver steady, as it stops by a clump of three small trees and several fallen logs, about 100 yards north of the inn. With his Colt revolver now run out of bullets, Ned reloads, and after tapping his helmet with his revolver he jeers at them, "You bloody dogs, you cannot shoot me." What kind of man would not turn and run away at such a vision but stand and face it? A man like Jesse Dowsett. For, despite it all, the humble railway guard, who stands no taller than 1.62 metres with his boots on, calls on the famous and mighty bushranger to give it all up, as Ned Kelly walks straight towards him. "You had better surrender, old man," he says bravely, like young David before Goliath with a mask on. Throw up your hands. "Never while I have a shot left," Ned replies. This makes the young railway guard really angry. For now Dowsett approaches even closer and, from a distance from which he simply cannot miss, shoots the figure in the head, asking rhetorically, "How do you like that, old man?" But when the smoke from the shot clears, the figure is still standing, pointing a revolver at Dowsett. "How do you like this?" says Ned as he fires back in turn, and, for the rest of his days, Dowsett will never know how the bushranger missed him. As the figure starts to shoot again, Steele, out to Dowsett's left, starts to move in, while the firing from the other police goes on. Some shots clearly hit the figure, all for no result. Ned slowly turns his whole body mechanically to the right to see the advancing Steele, and laboriously lifts his revolver to fire at him. The policeman has to dive to the ground to dodge it. "I felt the breath of the bullet," Steele would later recount. Desperate now, and shaken, the sergeant fires his revolver again, with still no result, only the metallic clink again. By now there are four police firing at close quarters, and though the figure reacts each time as though punched, it staggers back a step but does not fall. Now on his side on the ground, Steele sees his chance. For there, beneath the fallen and dead white tree trunk behind which the outlaw is standing, he can clearly see his legs, and they look to be unprotected by armour. The clear thought "I win" surges through Steele. Lying over on his left side, with his small, round tweed hat still securely on his head, he aims his shotgun at those legs and squeezes the trigger. There is a mighty roar, a flash of flame, a burst of smoke and the swan shot - small lead pellets the size of nail heads - bursts forth. Immediately, there is a kind of strangled, tinny cry from the figure as it staggers a yard back ... Finally, there is a groan, the monster lurches forward and then, in a strangled voice that sounds oddly hollow and metallic in the cylindrical iron helmet, it cries out, "That is enough. I am done!" before falling face up with a heavy crash behind the stump. Ned is bleeding from his hip, thigh and groin - but he's still gripping his revolver tightly. It is just on a quarter past seven on this misty morning. Running forward, Steele now leaps upon the fallen figure, as does Dowsett, while Senior Constable John Kelly is not far behind, as they all jump upon him. After a fierce and uneven struggle, Ned gives up, and it is Senior Constable Kelly who wrenches the helmet from his shoulders. In one stunned moment, Ned's attackers can confirm for the first time just who they had been fighting, and it is Steele who gathers himself first to proclaim it. "By heavens, it is Ned," he exults. Many others now rush up, including Constable James Dwyer, who cannot believe his eyes. There on the ground before him, wrapped in some kind of strange armour, is the man who, 20 months earlier, had killed three of his colleagues, including his dearest friend, Thomas Lonigan. Most conveniently, Kelly has his arms pinned and his legs spread-eagled, his groin vulnerable. The opportunity is just too good to miss, and this one is for Thomas ... "With something like a war whoop," as it would later be described, Dwyer races forward and aims the cruellest of kicks at Ned Kelly's testicles. The last man who had attacked Ned Kelly in this part of the anatomy had died at Ned's hands not long afterwards, so in some ways, Dwyer could count himself lucky - instead of his swinging right foot striking soft testicles, it crashes into the armour of Kelly's groin guard, composed of iron a quarter of an inch thick. There is a loud clang, breaking the frozen moment, and Dwyer yells in excruciating pain, before hopping away like a demented and stricken kangaroo with a thorn in its paw. This is an edited extract from Ned Kelly, by Peter FitzSimons, William Heinemann, $49.95.