Another woman screamed, and Seth Winters’s face paled. He knew how very little it would now take to start a panic. But the band played the louder, the performers went round and round the great ring, the clowns frolicked and the monkeys pranked, and he inwardly blessed the discipline which kept every player to his post, as if such electric storms were every day incidents.
“What are those men doing to the roof?” suddenly demanded Molly Martin of her neighbor, James, calling his attention to the sagging canvas and the employees hurrying hither and thither to lift it on the points of great poles. Then would follow a splash of water down the slope from the central supporting pole of that flimsy roof, dashing off at the scalloped edges upon the surrounding ground.
“Water’s heavy. I guess they’re afraid it’ll break and douse the people. Hi! But that was a teaser! It don’t stop a minute and it’s getting blacker’n ink. Never heard such a roar and it don’t let up a second. They’ll have to stop the performance till it slacks up, and—What fools these folks are that’s hurrying out into that downpour!”
“Maybe—maybe—they’re safer outside. Rain won’t hurt—much—but circus tents are sometimes blown down—I’ve read——”
“Now come, Alfy Babcock, just hold your tongue! Rough way to speak but I mean it. Hear what the Master said? How it was mighty easy to start a panic but impossible to stop one, or nigh so? Everyone that keeps still and behaves helps to make somebody else do it. Here, boy, fetch them peanuts this way? Dip in, Alfy, I’ll treat, and I see the lemonade feller’s headed this way, too. Whilst we’re waitin’ we might as well——”
Even Jim’s philosophy was put to the test just then, for with a peanut half-way to his lips his hand was arrested by another terrific crash and the swishing tear of wet canvas.