Once again the Flopper’s eyes swept the scene.  A few feet in advance of the crowd, as though drawn irresistibly forward, young Holmes hung upon his crutch.  The boy’s soul seemed in his face—­hope, a world of it, as he gazed at the Patriarch, sickening fear as he looked at the Flopper; his lips moving without sound, his body trembling with emotional excitement.  Still once again the Flopper’s eyes swept the line of men and women and children, fast reaching toward a common ungovernable hysteria—­and then he turned with an unbalanced, impotent, broken movement, flung out his good arm toward the Patriarch in piteous supplication, and, jerking himself forward, went on.

Slowly, very slowly at first, he resumed his way, crawling it seemed by no more than a painful inch on inch, in mortal pain, in mortal agony and struggle—­then gradually his movements began to quicken, as though growing upon him were a mad, elated haste that he could not control—­quicker and quicker he went, pitching and lurching wildly; from a pace that was beyond him.

A strange, low, moaning sound rose from behind him, fluttering, inarticulate, that voiceless utterance that seeks to find some vent for human emotion when human emotion sweeps with mighty surge to engulf the soul.  It rose and died away and rose again—­and died away—­and children began to whimper with a fear and terror that they did not understand, and seeking solace in their elders’ faces found added cause for fear instead.

Nearer to that saintly figure who stood so calm, so quiet, the massive white-locked head still turned a little in that curious listening attitude, beside whom, close drawn now, was that white-clad girlish form, whose eyes were lowered, whose sweet face seemed to hold a heaven of pity and infinite compassion, upon whose lips there was a smile of divine tenderness, drew that piteous mockery of the image of a man, whose every movement appeared one of agony beyond human power to endure—­and the agony found echo in the watchers’ souls, and a low, muffled groan as of men in pain and hurt, ran tremulously along the line.

Still nearer to the Patriarch drew the Flopper.  More heart-rending was his every movement, for with his quickened pace he sought to move without the aid of the only member that was as other men’s, his left hand and arm that, in pleading, yearning supplication, was stretched out before him to the Patriarch.

The extreme ends of the long line of watchers curled a little inward, almost imperceptibly, a half step taken without volition.  The crippled boy, swaying upon his crutch, his lips parted, trembling in every limb, edged forward hesitantly, fearfully, now a foot, now another, now the bare space of a single inch.  And now down the entire length of the line from end to end that wavering, rocking movement in swaying, pregnant unison grew stronger—­men knew not what they did—­it seemed the very air they breathed must smother them—­and, in that dull, weird, lingering note, rose again the sound of moaning that seemed to beat in consonance with the distant mournful rhythm of the endless beat of surf on shore.