But Mack waves him aside and stands pondering. He is “getting the idea.”
“Man, do you see him?” whispers his brother Danny, who stands near to Cameron. “I believe he has got it.”
Cameron nods his head. Mack wears an impressive air of confidence and strength.
“It will be a great throw,” says Cameron to Danny.
“Easy and slow” Mack poises the great hammer in his hand, swinging it gently backward and forward as if it had been a boy's toy, the great muscles in arms and back rippling up and down in firm full waves under his white skin, for he is now stripped to the waist for this throw.
Suddenly, as if at command, the muscles seem to spring to their places, tense, alert. “Easy.” Yes, truly, but by no means “slow.” “Easy,” the great hammer swings about his head in whirling circles, swift and ever swifter. Once—and twice—the great muscles in back and arms and back and legs knotted in bunches—thrice!
“Ah-h-h!” A long, wailing, horrible sound, half moan, half cry, breaks from the people. Mack has missed his direction, and the great hammer, weighted with the potentialities of death, is describing a parabola high over the heads of the crowding, shrieking, scattering people.
“Oh, my God! My God! Oh, my God! My God!” With his hands covering his eyes the big man is swaying from side to side like a mighty tree before a tempest. Cameron and Ross both spring to him. On the hillsides men stand rigid, pale, shaking; women shriek and faint. One ghastly moment of suspense, and then a horrid sickening thud; one more agonising second of silence, and then from a score of throats rises a cry:
“It's all right! All right! No one hurt!”
From five hundred throats breaks a weird unearthly mingling of strange sounds; cheers and cries, shouts and sobs, prayers and oaths. In the midst of it all Mack sinks to his knees, with hands outstretched to heaven.