"I'll complain of you, my lad," said Billy, in a quivering voice. "This won't stop here, I can promise you."
"Look here!" cried the officer. "We have ladies here and you are alarming them. Why are we stuck here? Has the machinery gone wrong?"
"You are here," said the man, "because I have put a wedge against the hawser above you."
"You fouled the line! How dared you do such a thing! What right have you to frighten the women and put us all to this inconvenience? Take that wedge out this instant, or it will be the worse for you."
The man was silent.
"Do you hear what I say? Why the devil don't you answer? Is this a joke or what? We've had about enough of it, I tell you."
Mary MacLean had gripped her lover by the arm in agony of sudden panic.
"Oh, Tom!" she cried. "Look at his eyes—look at his horrible eyes! The man is a maniac."
The workman stirred suddenly into sinister life. His dark face broke into writhing lines of passion, and his fierce eyes glowed like embers, while he shook one long arm in the air.
"Behold," he cried, "those who are mad to the children of this world are in very truth the Lord's anointed and the dwellers in the inner temple. Lo, I am one who is prepared to testify even to the uttermost, for of a verity the day has now come when the humble will be exalted and the wicked will be cut off in their sins!"