But before it could take expression Grot, the guard, threw himself before his machine. There was no filthy word which he did not raise to chuck into the face of the mob. The dirtiest term of revilement was not dirty enough for him to apply to the mob. The mob turned red eyes upon him. The mob glared at him. The mob saw: The man there, in front of them, was abusing them in the name of the machine. For them, the man and the machine melted into one. Man and machine deserved the same hatred. They pushed forward against man and machine. They seized the man and meant the machine. They roared him down. They stamped him underfoot. They dragged him hither and thither and out of the door. They forgot the machine, for they had the man—had the guard of the heart-beat of all the machines—thinking that, in tearing the man away from the Heart-machine, they were tearing the heart from the breast of the great machine-city.
What should be done to the heart of Metropolis?
It should be trodden underfoot by the mob.
“Death!” yelled the victorious mob. “Death to the machines!” yelled the victorious mob.
They did not see that they no longer had a leader. They did not see that the girl was missing from the procession.
The girl was standing before the Heart-machine of the city. Her smile was cool and silver. She stretched out her hand, which was more delicate than glass, she seized the weighty lever, which was set to “Safety.” She pressed the lever round, still smiling, then walked out, with light, mad, step.
Behind her the machine began to race. Above the deep mysteries of its delicate joints, like the sun’s disc—like the halo of a divine being—stood the silver racing wheel, the spokes of which appeared, in the whirl of revolution, as a single circling disc.
The heart of Metropolis, Joh Fredersen’s city, began to run up a temperature, seized by a deadly illness....
CHAPTER XVI
“Father—!!”