“He has some sense,” replied Braunt, “and will stay where he is.”
Neither Braimt nor Marsten had been present during the morning’s battle; but they, like many others with nothing to do, had come in the afternoon.
As Braunt spoke the small door in the gate opened, and Sartwell, entirely alone, stepped out. He had no more formidable weapon in his hand than his customary slim and trim umbrella. His silk hat was as glossy and his clothes as spick and span as if he were a tailor’s model. He seemed to have aged a trifle since the strike began, but his wiry well-knit body was as erect as ever, and in his eye was that stern look of command before which, at one time or another, every man in his employ had quailed.
An instantaneous hush fell upon the crowd. The cry of a hawker in a distant street was heard. Every man knew that the flinging of a missile or the upraising of an arm even, would be as a spark in a powder-mill. Let but a stroke fall, and all the police in London could not have saved the life of the man walking across the cleared space from the gates towards the crowd. The mass of silent humanity had but to move forward, and Sartwells life would be crushed out on the paving-stones.
Sartwell, without pause and without hurry, walked across the intervening space with evident confidence that the men would make way for him. There was no sign of fear in his manner, nor on the other hand was there any trace of swaggering authority about him; but there was in the glance of his steely eye and the poise of his head that indefinable something which stamps a man master,—which commands obedience, instant and unquestioned.
The crowd parted before him, and he cast no look over his shoulder. Habit being strong, one or two raised hand to forelock as he passed, getting in return the same curt nod that had always acknowledged such salutation. The human ocean parted before him as did the Red Sea before the Hebrew leader, and the manager passed through as unscathed.
“God!” cried Braunt, towering above his fellows and shaking his fist at the unoffending sky, “I have seen in my life one brave man.”