Schwartz, stirred to enthusiasm, shouted a brutal parody of Tennyson.
“The dynamite falls on castle walls
And splendid buildings old in story.
The column shakes, the tyrant quakes,
And the wild wreckage leaps in glory.
Throw, comrade, throw: set the wild echoes flying;
Throw, comrade; answer, wretches, dying, dying, dying.”
If the remainder of the crew resembled this sample, I was caged in a veritable inferno. As yet, of course, I knew nothing of their numbers or feelings, but my expectations were far from being roseate.
“But, man!” I cried, turning to Burnett, “would you massacre helpless multitudes? you, who prate of tyranny, would you, also, play the rôle of tyrants?”
Before the gathering horror all my wonder at the Attila had vanished. I felt only the helpless abject dismay with which one confronts an appalling but inevitable calamity. At that moment some disaster to the aëronef would have been welcome. The masterful vice of the fanatics maddened me. Rebel, however, as I might, I was of no account. The snake that snapped at the file had more in his favour.