Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/173

 METROPOLIS paler' and paler, gave her no time to think. With the ch~]d in her arms. she ran from house to house, calling to the others,

which had hidden themselves. Then they came, stumbling and crying, coming in troops. ghastly spectres, like children of stone, passionlessly begotten and grudgingly born. They were like little corpses in mean little shrouds, aroused to wakefulness on Doomsday by the voice of the angel, rising from out rent·open graves. They clustered themselves around Maria, screaming because the water, the cool water, was licking at their feet. Maria shouted-hardly able to shout any more. There was in her voice the sharp cry of the mother-bird which sees winged Death above its brood. She waded about among the child-bodies, ten at her hands, at her dress, the others following closely, pushed along, tom along, with the stream. Soon the street was a wave of children's heads above which the pale, raised-up hands flitted like sea-gulls. And Maria's cry was drowned hy the wailing of the children and by the laughter of the pursuing water. The light in the Nenn-lamps became reddish, Bickering rhythmically and thrnwing ghostly shadnws. The street sloped. There was the mustering-ground. But the hu.ge elevators hung dead on their cables. Ropes, twisted from ropes-metal ropes, thick as a man's thigh, hung in the air. torn asunder. Blackish oil was welling in a leisurely channel from an exploded pipe. And over everything lay a dry vapour as if from heated iron and glowing stones. _ Deep in the darkness of distant alleys the gloom took on a brownish hue. A fire was smouldering there.... "Go up-'» whispered Maria's dry lips. But she was not able to Sfly the words. Winding stairs led upwards. The staircase was narrow-nobody used the stair-case which ran by the certain, infallible elevators. Maria crowded the children up the steps. But. up there, there reigned a darkness of impenetrable gloom and density. None of the children ven- . tured to ascend alone. . Maria scrambled up. She counted the steps. Like the rushing of a thousand wings came the sound of the children's feet behind her. in the narrow spiral. She did not know how

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