The majesty of his calmness began to influence the mob; the hisses and groans died away into silence, such comparative silence, that is, as was compatible with the greatness of the assembly.Then Raeburn braced himself up; dignified before, he now seemed even more erect and stately.The knowledge that for the moment he had that huge crowd entirely under control was stimulating in the highest degree.In a minute his stentorian voice was ringing out fearlessly into the vast arena; thousands of hearts were vibrating to his impassioned appeal.To each one it seemed as if he individually were addressed.
"You who call yourselves Englishmen, I come to appeal to you today!
You, who call yourselves freemen, I come to tell you that you are acting like slaves."Then with rare tact, he alluded to the strongest points of the British character, touching with consummate skill the vulnerable parts of his audience.He took for granted that their aims were pure, their standard lofty, and by the very supposition raised for a time the most abject of his hearers, inspired them with his own enthusiasm.
Presently, when he felt secure enough to venture it, when the crowd was hanging on his words with breathless attention, he appealed no longer directly to the people, but drew, in graphic language, the picture of the desolations brought by war.The simplicity of his phrases, his entire absence of showiness or bombast, made his influence indescribably deep and powerful.A mere ranter, a frothy mob orator, would have been silenced long before.
But this man had somehow got hold of the great assembly, had conquered them by sheer force of will; in a battle of one will against thousands the one had conquered, and would hold its own till it had administered the hard home-thrust which would make the thousands wince and retaliate.
Now, under the power of that "sledge-hammer Saxon," that marvelously graphic picture of misery and bereavement, hard-headed, and hitherto hard hearted men were crying like children.Then came the rugged unvarnished statement shouted forth in the speaker's sternest voice.
"All this is being done in your name, men of England! Not only in your name, but at your cost! You are responsible for this bloodshed, this misery! How long is it to go on? How long are you free men going to allow yourselves to be bloody executioners? How long are you to be slavish followers of that grasping ambition which veils its foulness under the fair name of patriotism?"Loud murmurs began to arise at this, and the orator knew that the ground swell betokened the coming storm.He proceeded with tenfold energy, his words came down like hailstones, with a fiery indignation he delivered his mighty philippic, in a torrent of forceful words he launched out the most tremendous denunciation he had ever uttered.
The string had been gradually worked up to its highest possible tension; at length when the strain was the greatest it suddenly snapped.Raeburn's will had held all those thousands in check; he had kept his bitterest enemies hanging on his words; he had lashed them into fury, and still kept his grip over them; he had worked them up, gaining more and more power over them, till at length, as he shouted forth the last words of a grand peroration, the bitterness and truth of his accusations proved keener than his restraining influence.
He had foreseen that the spell would break, and he knew the instant it was broken.A moment before, and he had been able to sway that huge crowd as he pleased; now he was at their mercy.No will power, no force of language, no strength of earnestness or truth would avail him now.All that he had to trust to was his immense physical strength, and what was that when measured against thousands?
He saw the dangerous surging movement in the sea of heads, and knew only too well what it betokened.With a frightful yell of mingled hatred and execration, the seething human mass bore down upon him!
His own followers and friends did what they could for him, but that was very little.His case was desperate.Desperation, however, inspires some people with an almost superhuman energy.Life was sweet, and that day he fought for his life.The very shouting and hooting of the mob, the roar of the angry multitude, which might well have filled even a brave man with panic, stimulated him, strengthened him to resist to the uttermost.
He fought like a lion, forcing his way through the furious crowd, attacked in the most brutal way on every side, yet ever struggling on if only by inches.Never once did his steadfastness waver, never for a single instant did his spirit sink.His unfailing presence of mind enabled him to get through what would have been impossible to most men, his great height and strength stood him in good stead, while the meanness and the injustice of the attack, the immense odds against which he was fighting nerved him for the struggle.
It was more like a hideous nightmare than a piece of actual life, those fierce tiger faces swarming around, that roar of vindictive anger, that frightful crushing, that hail storm of savage blows!
But, whether life or nightmare, it must be gone through with.In the thick of the fight a line of Goethe came to his mind, one of his favorite mottoes; "Make good thy standing place and move the world."And even then he half smiled to himself at the forlornness of the hope that he should ever need a standing place again.
With renewed vigor he fought his way on, and with a sort of glow of triumph and new-born hope had almost seen his way to a place of comparative safety, when a fearful blow hopelessly maimed him.
With a vain struggle to save himself he fell to the earth a vision of fierce faces, green leaves, and blue sky flashed before his eyes, an inward vision of Erica, a moment's agony, and then the surging crowd closed over him, and he knew no more.
