In the dim light of dawn, Kelly, dressed in his armour and armed with three handguns, rose out of the bush and attacked the police from their rear. Several members of the scattered police line returned fire but to no effect as Kelly moved steadily through the morning mist towards the hotel, his armour repelling bullets. The size and shape of the armour made him appear inhuman to the police, and his apparent invulnerability caused onlookers to react with "superstitious awe". Constable Arthur, the first policeman to encounter Kelly, recalled: "I was completely astonished, and could not understand what the object I was firing at was." One trooper exclaimed that it was a bunyip and could not be killed. A civilian volunteer cried out that it was the Devil. Journalist Tom Carrington wrote: