“Can’t you light the lantern again? Don’t be afraid. Just light it. Haven’t you a match? Don’t be afraid!”
If Eldon had carried the stolen fire of Prometheus in his hand he could not have kindled tinder with it. He heard Mrs. Vining growling:
“Get off, you damned fool, get off!”
But the line between his brain and his legs had also blown out a fuse.
The audience was almost seasick with laughter. Ribs were aching and cheeks were dripping with tears. People were suffering with their mirth and the reinfection of laughter that a large audience sets up in itself. Eldon’s glazed eyes and stunned ears somehow realized the activity of Batterson, who was epileptic in the wings and howling in a strangled voice:
“Come off, you—! Come off, or—I’ll come and kick you off!”
And now Eldon was more afraid of leaving than of staying.
In desperation Sheila took him by the elbow and started him on his way. Just as the hydrophobic Batterson was about to shout, “Ring!” Eldon slipped slowly from the stage.
Little Batterson met the blinded Cyclops and was only restrained from knocking him down by a fear that he might knock him back into the scene. As he brandished his arms about the giant he resembled an infuriated spider attacking a helpless caterpillar.
Batterson’s oration was plentifully interlarded with simple old Anglo-Saxon terms that can only be answered with a blow. But Eldon was incapable of resentment. He understood little of what was said except the reiterated line, “If you ever ask me again to let you play a part I’ll—”