FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   >>  
at me. "I'm not asking you to believe this," he said. "I'm merely telling you--what happened." "Go on," I whispered. He went on: "A silence like death fell on that vast crowd. The voice of the speaker screaming out wild cowardice about mercy from the Germans kept on for a few words, and then the man caught the electrical atmosphere and was aware that something was happening. He halted half-way in a word, and turned and faced the grim, motionless figure--Kitchener. The man stared a half minute and shot his hands up and howled, and ran into the throng. All over the great place, by then, was a whisper swelling into a bass murmur, into a roar, his name. "'Kitchener--Kitchener!' and 'K. of K.!' and 'Kitchener of Khartoum!' "Never in my life have I heard a volume of sound like London shouting that day the name of Kitchener. After a time he lifted his hand and stood, deep-eyed and haggard, as the mass quieted. He spoke. I can't tell you what he said. I couldn't have told you the next hour. But he quieted us and lifted us, that crowd, fearstruck, sobbing, into courage. He put his own steady dignity into those cheap, frightened little Johnnies. He gave us strength even if the worst came, and he held up English pluck and doggedness for us to look at and to live by. As his voice stopped, as I stood down in front just under him, I flung up my arms, and I suppose I cried out something; I was but a lad of twenty, and half crazed with the joy of seeing him. And he swung forward a step to me as if he had seen me all the time--and I think he had. 'Do the turn, Donald,' he said, 'The time has come for a Cochrane to save England.' "And with that he wheeled and without a look to right or left, in his own swift, silent, shy way he was gone. "Nobody saw where he went. I all but killed myself for an hour trying to find him, but it was of no use. And with that, as I sat at my lunch, too feverish and stirred to eat food, demanding over and over what he meant, what the 'turn' was which I was to do, why a Cochrane should have a chance to save England--with that, suddenly I knew." General Cochrane halted again, and again he gazed down the little river, the river of England, the river which he, more than any other, had kept for English folk and their peaceful play-times. I knew I must not hurry him; I waited. "The thing came to me like lightning," he went on, "and I had only to go from one simple step to another; it seemed all tho
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   >>  



Top keywords:

Kitchener

 

England

 

Cochrane

 

lifted

 

English

 
quieted
 

halted

 

silent

 

crazed

 
Nobody

twenty

 
killed
 

wheeled

 

whispered

 

forward

 

silence

 

happened

 

telling

 

Donald

 

peaceful


waited

 

simple

 

lightning

 

feverish

 

stirred

 

demanding

 

suddenly

 

General

 

chance

 

caught


volume

 
Khartoum
 

atmosphere

 

electrical

 

London

 
haggard
 

shouting

 

murmur

 

stared

 

minute


figure

 

motionless

 

howled

 

whisper

 

swelling

 

happening

 
throng
 

Germans

 

screaming

 

doggedness