We were struggling to seek refuge in the National Minorities' Hotel on the Avenue of Eternal Peace, but the doors were bolted. On the entrance steps a mob was beating to death a soldier they had caught. Through the glass doors, I could see the doorman looking on from inside the plush lobby.
Our vehicle was stoned by the unarmed defenders of Beijing as we drove back from the western outskirts of the city past several barricades of buses lined up along the bridges. We had turned back at Muxidi where a fierce battle, glimpsed in the flames, raged.
It was hard to see what was happening but we could clearly hear the shooting and see troops in full battle gear. Turning around and heading back towards Tiananmen along the otherwise deserted avenue, the mob mistook the Toyota being driven by French correspondent Eric Meyer for a military vehicle. When we showed our white faces and journalist cards, the stone throwers stopped and a few even applauded.
It was a rare moment when foreign journalists were actually welcomed by the local Chinese and better trusted than the government. As the advancing column of trucks loaded with troops - headed by tanks, jeeps and armoured personnel carriers, and flanked by files of what appeared to be paratroopers - edged closer, the mob waited, crouched behind railings and trees.
They had armed themselves with stones and sticks and were chanting 'tufei, tufei', meaning 'bandits, bandits'. They burned with a visceral hatred of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) which was so at odds with all the slogans put forward by the students about the army loving the people in the weeks since martial law had been declared.
A few hours earlier we had finished dinner at the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floor of the tallest office building in Beijing named after the China International Trust and Investment Corporation. It commanded a strategic view of the eastern approaches to Tiananmen Square and we could see if anything happened. On Saturday evening I was relaxed as my paper in London did not come out on a Sunday.