A wave of frantic humanity forced them forward. They held together. He heard her laugh—the eager, triumphant laugh of men in the glory of battle. "No one can separate us now!" she said.
"No one!" he answered gladly.
He knew it was true. Nothing, so it seemed to him, could break the steel link of their hands. But he had grown calmer. He had got to save her. The instinct which damns the weak acceptance of annihilation burnt up clearly in him. He gave ground to the force behind him, keeping his feet with the utmost exertion of his strength, striving to force a passage towards the village. It was a vain effort. Faces were turned to him. He read their expression. The mere curiosity had become distrust—a furtive antagonism as yet unarmed with purpose. A fakir, wild-eyed, bespattered with filth, his emaciated arms flung up in imprecation, leered up at him.
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
It was no more than a whisper. But it passed from lip to lip. They were pushed on, the circle about them tightening in a strangling noose. For all her courage, he knew that the woman beside him was weakening. He heard her voice, strained and breathless.
"Don't let me go under—don't let me go under——"
He knew the horror that had forced the appeal from her—the terror which can change a man's heart to water—the horror of those pitiless trampling feet—of those mad mob rushes under which a human body can be stamped out of recognition. He threw one arm about her. He no longer resisted. It was better to go on—to be forgotten. But the stench of those hot, dust-laden bodies sickened him. It was the smell of hatred—of madness. It sapped his strength. It was like the breathing in of a hideous poison.
They swept on. They had reached the densest part of the crowd. Above them he could see the golden image, swaying dangerously from the shoulders of its staggering bearers. A ray of red light from the sinking sun was on the face nearest to them. Its frozen cruelty seemed to have drawn life into itself—to be sucking up a horrible vitality from the very passions to which it had given birth. To Tristram's blurred vision the eyes blazed—the mouth gaped with a grotesque lust of hatred.
It was then he saw Meredith with his shoulders to the base of the altar, his arm raised, shielding his face. A half-naked fakir sprang at him and dragged the arm down, and Tristram saw what had been done. The face was blotted out with blood. The lips were moving. In one clenched hand was an open Bible. Through the hellish pandemonium Tristram caught a single sentence:
"Father, forgive them——"