’You talk as if executive capacity could be snatched out of the air like so much horse-power.  Can’t you manage yourselves on any terms?’ he said.

’We can, if you say so.  It will only cost those few lives to begin with,’

The Mayor pointed across the square, where Arnott’s men guided a stumbling group of ten or twelve men and women to the lake front and halted them under the Statue.

‘Now I think,’ said Takahira under his breath, ‘there will be trouble.’

The mass in front of us growled like beasts.

At that moment the sun rose clear, and revealed the blinking assembly to itself.  As soon as it realized that it was a crowd we saw the shiver of horror and mutual repulsion shoot across it precisely as the steely flaws shot across the lake outside.  Nothing was said, and, being half blind, of course it moved slowly.  Yet in less than fifteen minutes most of that vast multitude—­three thousand at the lowest count—­melted away like frost on south eaves.  The remnant stretched themselves on the grass, where a crowd feels and looks less like a crowd.

‘These mean business,’ the Mayor whispered to Takahira.  ’There are a goodish few women there who’ve borne children.  I don’t like it.’

The morning draught off the lake stirred the trees round us with promise of a hot day; the sun reflected itself dazzlingly on the canister-shaped covering of Salati’s Statue; cocks crew in the gardens, and we could hear gate-latches clicking in the distance as people stumblingly resought their homes.

‘I’m afraid there won’t be any morning deliveries,’ said De Forest.  ’We rather upset things in the country last night.’

‘That makes no odds,’ the Mayor returned.  ’We’re all provisioned for six months. We take no chances.’

Nor, when you come to think of it, does any one else.  It must be three-quarters of a generation since any house or city faced a food shortage.  Yet is there house or city on the Planet to-day that has not half a year’s provisions laid in?  We are like the shipwrecked seamen in the old books, who, having once nearly starved to death, ever afterwards hide away bits of food and biscuit.  Truly we trust no Crowds, nor system based on Crowds!

De Forest waited till the last footstep had died away.  Meantime the prisoners at the base of the Statue shuffled, posed, and fidgeted, with the shamelessness of quite little children.  None of them were more than six feet high, and many of them were as grey-haired as the ravaged, harassed heads of old pictures.  They huddled together in actual touch, while the crowd, spaced at large intervals, looked at them with congested eyes.