Tristram flung the man in front of him aside. He had felt the tense revival of strength in his companion like an electric current through all his nerves. They had got to stand together—to go down with the man of their race, for good or evil uphold him.
"We're coming!" Tristram shouted. "Hold on!"
Meredith turned his head in their direction. Perhaps he saw them through the veil of blood. He made a gesture urging them back, and in the same instant the man whom Tristram had flung aside revealed his face.
It was Lalloo, the money-lender.
"Dakktar Sahib!" he said.
"Damn you—let me go past——!"
The old man smiled imperturbably, shrugging his shoulders. The whisper, "The Dakktar Sahib," ran like an undercurrent of sound beneath the screams and curses of the swaying, tossing multitude. A woman spat in Meredith's disfigured face. Tristram lurched forward, but already they had lost ground. Some new force had them in its grip. They were bound in a revolving circle of which Lalloo had become the pivot. Tristram looked about him. He recognized faces which seemed to have sprung from nowhere. There was Mehr Singh, the corn-dealer, and Seetul the weaver, Peru the village ne'er-do-well—men with whom he had lived and suffered. He cursed at them in their dialect, and they regarded him stolidly. He shook Lalloo fiercely with his free hand.
"Let us get out of this—I've got to get back to my friend—do you hear. I've got to help him—do you hear, you lying, grasping old man?"
Lalloo shrugged his shoulders.
The circle rolled on. Meredith and the shining figure of the three-faced god had gone down in the black tumult. The roar of voices began to fade like thunder, rolling faintly in the distance. A breath of fresh air fanned their faces. The circle broke suddenly scattering in all directions.