Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/103

 Now he could clearly see how the earth was heaving and tossing like a stormy sea. And look, there were terrified people rushing out of their houses, waving their hands, stumbling and falling as though borne along by a gigantic whirlwind. Holding tightly to his rod, Binder stooped down to them and shouted, "Here, people, this way!" And the people seeing the shining merry-go-round calmly uplifted above the reeling earth, staggered towards it. Gripping the rod, Binder held out his free hand and pulled them up from the heaving earth: children, grandmothers, old men, all stood on the deck of the merry-go-round, taking breath again after their terrible fright, and looking down in dismay upon the earth spinning below them. Binder had just helped them all up, when a little black puppy came running by, yelping with fear, and tried to leap aboard; but the earth carried him faster and faster round the merry-go-round. Binder squatted down, reached out his hand, and grabbed the puppy by the tail, and lifted it into safety.

Then the orchestrion played a song of thanksgiving. It sounded like a chorus of survivors of a shipwreck, with the rough voices of the sailors mingling with the prayers of children. Over the unleashed tempest there bent a rainbow of melody (in B minor) and the heavens opened in the happy radiance of pizzicati on the violins. The castaways