"You can't kill this boy."
"Step aside, Blake," ordered a red-faced man, raising and cocking his weapon.
Norvin seized the rifle-barrel and turned it aside roughly. The two stared at each other with angry eyes.
"He's only a baby, don't you understand? Good God! You have children of your own."
"I—I—" The fellow hesitated. "So he is. Damnation! What has come over me?" He lowered his gun and turned against the others who were clamoring behind him. "This is—awful," he murmured, shakingly, when the crowd had passed on. "I've done all I intend to." He flung his rifle from him with a gesture of repugnance, and went out of the cell.
Norvin continued to stand guard over his charge while the search for Maruffi went on, for he dared not trust these men who had gone mad. Thus he did not learn that his arch enemy had been taken until he saw him rushed past in the hands of his captors. Caesar had fought as best he could against overwhelming odds, and continued to resist now in a blind fury; but a rope was about his neck, at the end of which were a dozen running men; a dozen gun-butts hustled him on his way to the open air. Blake closed the cell door upon Gino Cressi and followed, drawn by a magnetic force he could not resist.
The main gate of the prison opened before the rush of that tangled, growling handful of men, and they swept straight out into the turmoil that filled the streets. An instant later Maruffi was beset by five thousand maniacs; he was kicked, he was beaten, he was spat upon, he was overwhelmed by an avalanche of humanity. His progress to the gallows was a short but a terrible one, marked by a series of violent whirlpools which set through that river of people. The uproar was deafening; spectators screamed hoarsely, but did not hear their voices.
From where Blake paused beside the gate he traced the Sicilian's progress plainly, marveling at the fellow's vitality, for it seemed impossible that any human being could withstand that onslaught. A coil of rope sailed upward, a negro perched in a tree passed it over a limb, and the next instant the head and shoulders of the Capo-Mafia rose above the dense level of standing forms. He was writhing horribly, but, seizing the rope with his hands, he drew himself upward; his blackened face glared down upon his executioners. The grinning negro kicked at the dark head beneath him, once, twice, three times, so violently that he lost his balance and fell, whereupon a bellowing shout of laughter arose more terrible than any sound heretofore. Still the Sicilian clung to the rope which was strangling him. Then puffs of smoke curled up in the sunshine, and the crowd rolled back upon itself, leaving the gibbet ringed with armed men. Maruffi's body was swayed and spun as if by invisible hands; his fingers slipped; he settled downward.
Blake turned and hid his face against the cold, damp walls, for he was very sick.