Then began that terrible dance of death; the man dodging, doubling, squirming, hunted from one corner to another; the wheat slowly, inexorably flowing, rising, spreading to every angle, to every nook and cranny. It reached his middle. Furious and with bleeding hands and broken nails, he dug his way out to fall backward, all but exhausted, gasping for breath in the dust-thickening air. Roused again by the slow advance of the tide, he leaped up and stumbled away, blinded with the agony in his eyes, only to crash against the metal hull of the vessel. He turned about, the blood streaming from his face; he paused to collect his senses, and with a rush, another wave swirled about his ankles and knees. Exhaustion grew upon him. To stand still meant to sink; to lie or sit meant to be buried the quicker; and all this in the dark, all this in the air that could not be breathed, all this while he fought an enemy that could not be gripped, toiling in a sea that could not be stayed.
Guided by the sound of the falling wheat, S. Behrman crawled on hands and knees toward the hatchway. Once more he raised his voice in a shout for help. His bleeding throat and raw, parched lips refused to utter but a wheezing moan. Once more he tried to look toward the one patch of faint light above him. His eyelids, clogged with chaff, could no longer open. The wheat poured about his waist as he raised himself upon his knees.
Reason fled. Deafened with the roar of the grain, blinded and made dumb with its chaff, he threw himself forward with clutching fingers, rolling upon his back, and lay there, moving feebly, the head rolling from side to side. The wheat, leaping continuously from the chute, poured around him. It filled the pockets of the coat, it crept up the sleeves and trouser legs, it covered the great, protuberant stomach, it ran at last in rivulets into the distended, gasping mouth. It covered the face.
Upon the surface of the wheat, under the chute, nothing moved but the wheat itself. There was no sign of life. Then, for an instant, the surface stirred. A hand, fat, with short fingers and swollen veins, reached up, clutching, then fell limp and prone. In another instant it was covered. In the hold of the Swanhilda there was no movement but the widening ripples that spread flowing from the ever-breaking, ever-reforming cone; no sound, but the rushing of the wheat that continued to plunge incessantly from the iron chute in a prolonged roar, persistent, steady, inevitable.—From “The Octopus.” Copyright and used by kind permission of the publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.
DIALECT SELECTIONS
BOY WANTED
By Madge Elliot
One 24th of December, Mr. Oscar Blunt, who kept a large hat store in the lower part of Broadway, was writing at his desk, which was at the very end of the store, when somebody touched his elbow softly, and, looking up, was much astounded to see a ragged boy, whose old broad-brimmed hat almost hid his face, standing beside him. He was so much astonished, in fact, that he dropped his pen upon his paper, and thereby made a blot instead of a period.
“Why, my lad, how came you here?”