It was one mad tumult of contending forces, a maelstrom of opposing currents. Seldom was there a lull in that hundred-throated delirium, where, on raised steps about a little circular brass railing, men shouted and danced and flung up their hands and raced back and forth through a swarming beehive of cotton-hunger. Some were hatless, some had thrown coats and vests open, some white as paper, and some red and perspiring; some were snowing handfuls of torn-up pad sheets over their comrades, some were penciling madly in call-books, some were feverishly handing slips to agile youths dodging in and out through the seething mass. Every now and then a loud-noted signal-bell sounded from one end of the hall, calling a messenger boy for despatches.
In the momentary little lulls of that human tempest Durkin could catch the familiar pithy staccato of telegraph keys cluttering and pulsating with their hurried orders and news. He could see the operators, where they sat, apathetically pounding the brass, as unmoved as the youth at the light-crowned, red-lined blackboard, who caught up the different slips handed to him and methodically chalked down the calls under the various months.
Then the tumult began afresh once more, and through it all Durkin could hear the deep, bass, bull-like chest-notes of one trader rising loud above all the others, answered from time to time by the clear, high, penetratingly insistent and challenging soprano of another.
Curry once more had cotton on the upward move. It was rumored that the ginners’ report was to be a sensational one. Despatches from Southern points had shown advancing prices for spot cotton. A weak point had been found in the Government report. All unpicked cotton on the flooding Black Warrior bottoms would never reach a gin. The mills, it had been whispered about, were still buying freely, eagerly; yet already purchasers were having more difficulty in getting the commodity than when, weeks before, it had stood two hundred points lower. And still the sea of faces fought and howled and seethed, but still the price of cotton went up.
Durkin searched more carefully through that writhing mass of frenzied speculators for a glimpse of Curry himself.
He caught sight of him, at last, standing cool and collected and rosy-faced, a few paces in front of the New Orleans blackboard, at the edge of the little sea of frantic men that fought and surged and battled at his side. Spot cotton had already soared to 17.55. The wires were reporting it at eighteen cents in New Orleans. Hurry orders from Liverpool were increasing the tension.
Durkin took a second and closer look at the great bull leader. He made note of the large emerald flashing in his purple cravat, of the gaily dotted white waistcoat, in the armholes of which were jauntily caught the careless thumbs, of the black derby hat tilted a trifle down over the careless, rosy face. This was the man who was so lavishly giving away houses and jewels and automobiles. This was the man on whom men and women in all walks of life, in every state and territory of the Union, were pinning their faith for established twenty cent cotton and the balm of affluence that it would bring them! This was the man at whose whisper a hundred thousand spindles had ceased to revolve, and at whose nod, in cotton towns half a world away, a thousand families either labored or were idle, had food or went hungry.
A momentary lull came in the storm, a nervous spasm of uncertainty. It seemed only a sheer caprice, but in sixty seconds the overstrained price had fallen away again twenty points. Curry, stroking his small mustache, stepped in closer to the circular brass railing of the Pit, and said a quiet word or two to his head-broker. His rosy face was expressionless, and he pulled languidly at his little mustache once more. But his motion had started the upward tendency again. Both May and July cotton bounded up, point by point, capriciously, unreasonably, inexorably, as though at the wafting of a magician’s wand.
When the excitement seemed at its highest, when the shrill-noted chorus of sellers and buyers was shrieking its loudest, Samuel Curry went out to eat his luncheon. This was at once noticed and commented on,—for dozens of eyes, both eager and haggard, watched the leader’s every move and expression.
The change that swept over the Pit was magical. The tumult subsided. The shouting men about the brass railing stopped to take breath. The sallow-faced young man who chalked prices up on the Pit-edge blackboard rested his tired fingers. Brokers sat about on little camp-stools. For the first time Durkin could catch the sound of the sustained note of the telegraph keys clicking busily away. The sunlight fell across the paper-littered floor. The crowd in the gallery grew less. The operators were joking and chatting. A messenger boy had fallen asleep on his bench. The army was waiting for the return of its leader.