So he lay still while the hue and cry of the man hunters quickened and waxed behind him. Escape was out of the question, since, even if he had the strength to drag himself a few yards farther, they would run him down in the end. Resistance, too, would be hopeless, with, as he judged, some twenty or thirty in the posse.
He could feel their fury growing as they slipped and slithered through the grasses. Oaths, obscenities, and laughter accompanied every grotesque accident, as one man fell with the weedy tangle about his feet, or another went knee-deep into the swamp. The very fear of "a dose of lead" intensified their excitement till, as they caught sight of him, a helpless thing with face hidden in the mud, they gave vent to a yell of satisfaction.
They didn't let him rise; they didn't so much as pull him to his feet. They dragged him by his collar, by his hair, by his arms, by his legs, by anything they could seize, kicking, beating, and cursing him. He made no outcry; he didn't speak a word. For aught they knew, he might be drunk or insane or dead. Only once, when a man kicked him in the face, was he powerless to suppress a groan. Otherwise, he was just a sodden lump of flesh as, now head first, now feet first, now with face upward, now with face downward he was tugged and tumbled and hurtled and rolled over the five hundred yards of slime between the spot where they had caught him and the road.
There he had a new experience. He learned what it was not only to be outside the human race, but to be held as its foe. Already, while still far out on the marsh, he had heard the yells: "Kill him! Kill him! Kick the damn skunk to death!" But when actually surrounded by these howling, screaming, outraged citizens, with their teams and motor cars banked in the roadway, he tasted the peculiar astonishment of the man who has always been liked when assailed by a storm of hatred. While the three or four police who by this time had appeared did their best to defend him, men fought with one another to get at him. A well-dressed girl of not more than eighteen reached over the shoulder of one of the police and struck him on the head with her sunshade. An elderly woman squeezed herself near him and spat in his face.
"Ah, say, people," one of the police called out, "give the young guy a chanst. Can't you see he's only a kid?"
"'Kid' be damned!" came the response. "Say, fellows, here's the telegraph pole! Let's lynch him!"
"Lynch him! Lynch him! String him up!"
"No! Let's make a bonfire and burn him alive!"
"Chuck the cops into the Hackensack, and then we can do as we like."
"Lynch him! Lynch him! Lynch him!"