Ordinarily, I take it, they would have fired on the instant; that is the etiquette here.

But this time they--all separately but all together--made a new rule.

No one said a word or, so far as I could see, made a movement.

Here came in my own experience.

I had been more than once in a tight place of something of the same kind, so I simply behaved in the most natural way I could.