At that moment he stopped, but it was only for a second. Spinning his cab about, he spurted off in a new direction. Glancing from the window as he turned, they saw that the main thoroughfare ahead was blocked by what appeared to be a procession. Street after street he tried, working round in a circle, never getting any nearer. At last, growing desperate, he took the plunge, tooting his horn and forcing his way through the outskirts of the seething mob. By the time Hindwood had ordered him to turn back it was too late; for a hundred yards behind them, from pavement to pavement, the thoroughfare was packed with pedestrians and vehicles, all headed in the one direction. To get out and walk, even if they had been willing to sacrifice their baggage, was out of the question. The crowd in front was more dense than the crowd behind. The air was full of shrieks of fainting women and the shiver of plate-glass as shop-windows gave way under the pressure. To escape the crush, which was momentarily increasing, people were clambering to the roof of the taxi and standing thick along the running-boards.
Santa was speaking in a torrent to the strangers clinging to the doors.
“Can't you stop long enough to tell me what's happening?” Hindwood interrupted.
She apologized. “I forgot for the moment that you can't speak German. They're as puzzled as we are. All they know is that they're doing what every one else is doing. They don't know the cause. The same thing's happening at every station. A panic's struck Vienna—a foreboding of disaster. It's a case of nerves. In some places looting has started. Every one's escaping—the entire population. It's anything to get westward to France, Switzerland, Germany, away from this nightmare of starvation. They're storming the trains in the Bahnhof, trying to compel the engineers to—”
Turning from him, she commenced to ply more questions in her hurried flow of German.
It was all clear now—the porter's hesitancy, the cashier's earnestness, the driver's reluctance. They had been trying to prevent him from hurrying a woman into danger. He had been too obsessed by the thought of reaching Anna even to pay attention. For confirmation of what Santa had told him, he had only to glance at the surrounding throng. The lean multitude was absurdly prepared for its futile exodus. Irrespective of class, every individual was burdened with whatever he or she had had time to rescue of the household goods. They carried bundles beneath their arms and sacks on their backs. Everything on wheels had been commandeered. Some pushed perambulators, piled high with ill-assorted belongings; others had harnessed themselves to carts. None of them could have considered whether his or her presence would be allowed in a happier country. Obviously over night the half of Vienna could not have procured the necessary permits to travel.
On the outskirts those who were most desperate, because furthest from the station, had begun to charge. Hindwood watched the stampede—how terror was transforming forlorn human beings into animals. They were of all kinds and sorts, mechanics, waiters, slum-dwellers, merchants, shop-girls,' demi-mondaines, with here and there a sprinkling of patrician faces from the palaces of the bankrupt aristocracy. There were lonely men and women, but for the most part they were grouped in families, the children dragging at their mother's skirts and the youngest in the father's arms. They pushed, jostled and fought, trampling the weak in their frenzy to get forward.
Suddenly the madness of self-preservation froze with horror. At the end of the street, far up the pale river of gray faces, horsemen were advancing, standing tall in their stirrups, smiting with their swords. Santa flung herself to the floor. “Down. Keep down. The children—oh, my God!”
Like a volley of hail, bullets commenced to patter. They whipped the street from end to end, hissing in their flight and thudding as they found their target. The taxi tossed and rocked like a rowboat in a mill-race. The mob had given way; like water from a burst dam, it roared between the tall, confining houses. It swept backwards weeping, bleeding, desperate, exhausted, wilder in its retreat than it had been in its advance. Behind it came the cavalry, riding it down, firing and stabbing. In five minutes nothing was in sight, save upset vehicles, scattered belongings, dead lying awkwardly in the October sunshine and wounded crawling weakly in search of refuge.
Reaching through the shattered window, Hindwood tapped the driver's shoulder. “Drive on.”