Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/243

Rh luck of a polecat, his odor did not keep his enemies at a distance! How should he escape from their combined efforts? The signal had been given. They would not hit him; they confined themselves to jostling him. The game had rules consecrated by many earlier precedents. More than one dishonest speculator had been served in the same way. Their hands plunged in their pockets, the tyrants used only their elbows, knees and backs. Just so do the waves roll and cast about a castaway, tormenting him everywhere, and pitch him from one to the other, doing him the least possible injury.

Dupoissy was indeed a shipwrecked man!

He was whirled from right to left, pitched for a moment or two in one direction, then tacked about fantastically. Hardly had one crowd of his torturers flung him forth than another shoved him back. Again, he stood motionless, torn between two currents of equal force, almost reduced to pulp, three-quarters exhausted. Those who were nearest him took the risk of sharing his fate.

"Stop! Not so hard!" they cried to their comrades.

A carnivorous joy fed upon his distress. A single cruel emotion possessed these hundreds of brokers venting themselves upon an unskillful gambler, as if they were college boys hazing a butt. And, as is usually the case, those most in debt and most suspected were the leaders of the orgy.

Gouty millionaires were represented by their brokers or heirs.

The policemen watched discreetly. As long as the victim's skin was uninjured, and they limited the sport to jostling him, the policemen had no authority to