This new deluge threatened to grind those who had taken refuge here by the Wardrobe building, with the belief they had escaped. Maimed bodies and dead ones piled up by Gilbert. He had to back into the recess of the gateway, where the weight made the walls crack.
The stifled youth felt like yielding; but collecting all his powers by a mighty effort, he enclasped Andrea with his arms, applying his face to her dress as if he meant to strangle her whom he wished to protect.
“Farewell,” he gasped as he bit her robe in kissing it.
His eyes glancing about in an ultimate call to heaven, were offered a singular vision.
A man was standing on a horseblock, clinging by his right hand to an iron ring sealed in the wall: while with his left he seemed to beckon an army in flight to rally.
He was a tall dark man of thirty, with a figure muscular but elegant. His features had the mobility of Southerners’, strangely blending power and subtlety. His eyes were piercing and commanding.
As the mad ocean of human beings poured beneath him he cast out a word or a cabalistic token. On these, some individual in the throng was seen to stop, fight clear and make his way towards the beckoner to fall in at his rear. Others, called likewise, seemed to recognize brothers in each other, and all lent their hands to catch still more of the swimmers in this tide of life. Soon this knot of men were formed into the head of a breakwater, which divided the fugitives and served to stay and stem the rush.
At every instant new recruits seemed to spring out of the earth at these odd words and weird gestures, to form the backers of this wondrous man.
Gilbert nerved himself. He felt that here alone was safety, for here was calm and power.
A last flicker of the burning staging, irradiated this man’s visage and Gilbert uttered an outcry of surprise.