A stupid smile hovered over Joh Fredersen’s face.
“What does that mean ... captured...?”
“The mob has captured him, Joh Fredersen!”
“Captured—?”
“Yes.”
“My son—?”
“Yes!—Freder, your son—!”
A senseless, pitiable, animal sound broke from Joh Fredersen’s mouth. His mouth stood open, distorted—his hands rose as in childish defence, to ward off a blow which had already fallen. His voice said, quite high and piteously:
“My son...?”
“They took him prisoner,”—Josaphat tore the words out—“because they sought a victim for their despair, and for the fury of their immeasurable, inconceivable agony. When they saw the black water running towards them from the shafts of the underground railway, and when they realised that, as the result of the stopping of the pumps, the whole workmen’s town had been flooded out, then they went mad with despair. They say that some mothers, blind and deaf to all remonstrance, tried, as if possessed, to dive down through the flooded shafts, and just the terrible absoluteness of the futility of any attempt at rescue has turned them into beasts and they lust for revenge....”