Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/174

 METROPOLIS long she had been climbing up.' Innumerable hands were clutching her damp dress. She dragged her burdens upward, praying, moaning the while-praying only. for strength for another hour. "Don't cry, little brothers/" she stammered. "My little sisters, please don't cry." Children were screaming, down in the depths-and the hundred windings of the stair-way gave echo's b"umpet to each cry: "Mother-I Mother-I" And once more: "The water's coming-In Stop and lie down, halfway up the stairs-? No! "Little sistersI Little brothers-do come'alongI" Higher-winding ever and always higher upward; then, at last, a wide landing. Gl"eyish light from above. A walledin roomj not yet the upper world, but its forecQurt. A short, straight Hight of stairs upon which lay a shaft of light. The opening, a. trap~door, which seemed to be pressed inwards. Between the daar and the square of the wall, a cleft, as narrow as a eat's body. Maria saw that. She did not know what it meant. She had the uncertain feeling of something not being as it ought to be. But she did not want to think about it. With an almost violent movement she tore her hands, her gown, free from the children's tugging fingers, and dashed, hurled forward far more by her desperate will than by her benumbed feet, through the empty room apd up the steep stairway. She stretched ou;t her hands and tried to raise the press~d­ in door. It did not budge. Once more. No result. Head, arms, shoulders pushing, hips and knees pressing, as if to burst their sinews. No result. The door did not yield by a hail"s breadth. If a child had tried "to push the cathedral from its place it could not have acted more foolisWy nor ineffectnally. For, upon the door, which alone led the way out of the dep.ths, there towered, as high as houses, the corpses of the dead engines, which, when madness fu·st broke out over Metropolis, had heen the terrihle playthings of the mob.

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