Behind him the low murmur of excitement grew to hysteria. They demanded to do something, to destroy and smash and rend. Another two minutes and nothing could hold them back. To and fro swayed five hundred hot bodies, back and forward shook five hundred threatening hands.
Koppy knew that he was master of their very souls, that there before him five hundred men awaited his direct orders without question. Thrills tingled scalp. With fists uplifted he shrieked at them:
"Now, now is the time! We are five hundred; they are two. They are ours. These oppressors, who have for years ground our faces to the dust, are trembling before us. Let us strike—strike! We rush, five hundred of us; we smash and wreck. Then we are masters, not slaves. The trestle must go—now!"
"Me, too," murmured Werner from the shadows. "Damn glad I got a start.
Wonder how far it is to my next meal."
"Come closer, men, closer!" Koppy was holding out his arms to them.
"Let me feel your strong hands before we strike. It is almost time.
It is dark. From the crawling shadows five hundred—"
He had overdone it. Five hundred pairs of eyes tore themselves from their leader's face and shifted fearfully to the lurking, crawling shadows that closed them in.
And at the instant a dismal howl struck through the night, unplacable, all-pervading, unearthly. At the top of its most hideous note it crashed to silence.
Five hundred pairs of eyes sought each other with the blankness of terror-numbed minds. Five hundred bodies trembled. Transfixed, they waited.
It came again, louder, crushing menace in its tone. Two piercing whistles cut it short, and some huge, unearthly creature crashed out from the darkness toward the place where they stood. A roar of cannon seemed to tear their ear-drums—another—and another—everywhere about them. With one mind five hundred imaginative workmen dropped their weapons from nerveless hands and fled, bumping, tumbling, fighting each other. A voiceless flow of chaotic clamour marked their course toward the camp.
Koppy, teeth gnashing, threw up his hands and slunk into the darkness.