The answers to his questions were in the thick,
vulgar speech.

"What did he say?" asked Graham.

"He knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have arrived
here before the people knew--had not someone in the Wind-Vane Offices
learnt. He said a girl."

"A girl? Not--?"

"He said a girl--he did not know who she was. Who came out from the
Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins."

And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless
tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the
street. "To your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to
his ward!"

CHAPTER XXII

THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE

As Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House,
they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. "To your wards!
To your wards!" Everywhere men and women in blue were hurrying from
unknown subterranean employments, up the staircases of the middle path;
at one place Graham saw an arsenal of the revolutionary committee
besieged by a crowd of shouting men, at another a couple of men in the
hated yellow uniform of the Labour Police, pursued by a gathering crowd,
fled precipitately along the swift way that went in the opposite
direction.

The cries of "To your wards!" became at last a continuous shouting as
they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were
unintelligible. "Ostrog has betrayed us," one man bawled in a hoarse
voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham's ear until it
haunted him. This person stayed close beside Graham and Asano on the
swift way, shouting to the people who swarmed on the lower platforms as
he rushed past them. His cry about Ostrog alternated with some
incomprehensible orders. Presently he went leaping down and disappeared.

Graham's mind was filled with the din. His plans were vague and unformed.
He had one picture of some commanding position from which he could
address the multitudes, another of meeting Ostrog face to face. He was
full of rage, of tense muscular excitement, his hands gripped, his lips
were pressed together.

The way to the Council House across the ruins was impassable, but Asano
met that difficulty and took Graham into the premises of the central
post-office. The post-office was nominally at work, but the blue-clothed
porters moved sluggishly or had stopped to stare through the arches of
their galleries at the shoutin