A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations, shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground. She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.
She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a hair's breadth during the next two hours.
Over to the left a young man leaped to his feet with a scream:—
"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!"
The great negress caught him in her arms as he fell, and laid him down, then leaped up and down, shrieking:—
"O Jesus, come. Come, God's Lamb!"
Around her a dozen women took up her cry. Most of them had no voices. Their horrifying screams had become hoarse hisses, yet still they strove. Scores of voices were mixed in the pandemonium of prayer.
All order was lost. Three of the preachers now stood shouting before the mourners' bench, two were in the aisles.
One came down the aisle toward the girl with the braided hair. As he came he prayed. Foam was on his lips, but his eyes were cool and calculating; they betrayed him.
As he came he fixed his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round, pretty, but childish faces.