The effect of these words was electrical. One of the guards, releasing me with a hurried gesture, reached for his three-pointed helmet and flung it off, to reveal a gasping, perspiring individual close to the last stages of exhaustion.
"I'm through!" he groaned. "By the gray hairs of my ancestors, I'm through! For wakes and wakes I've been suffocating in this steel case! I'm not going to go without air altogether! Let some one else be turned over if they want! I'm going on strike!"
"So am I!" announced a second guard, snatching off his helmet.
"So am I!" snapped a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, until, in a moment, all the pike-bearers stood unhelmeted and rebellious. "I'm going on strike! On strike! On strike!"
"We want air!" one of them started the cry. And "We want air, we want air, we want air!" began to echo and reverberate throughout the whole great hall. And the guards, surging forward in an angry mass, lost all semblance of military order, but swung their pikes furiously in a chaos of rushing, pushing, scuffling, shouting forms.
For a moment, Thuno Flâtum was too thunderstricken for words. Then, as his attendants crowded about him protectively, I thought I heard his voice lifted during a momentary lull in the storm. "This is sedition! Sedition! I'll have you all violet-rayed! I'll have you all—"
But I did not hear the conclusion of the speech. Taking advantage of the hubbub, I had started hastily toward the door, ordering my attendants to follow.
An instant later, as I slipped into the safety of the passageway, I was aware only of the hoarse yelling of the guardsmen and of the confusion of waving pikes. At last the Revolution had begun!