The Harbor Part 52

I found my cell a cool relief after all that fever of cries. With surprise I noticed it was clean. I had thought all cells were filthy holes. Still in a daze, I sat down on my cot and felt the big bruise on my head.

"Where am I? What has happened? What has all this to do with me? What is it going to mean in my life?"

I heard a nasal voice from somewhere say:

"I know this pen. They're putting the girls with the prost.i.tutes."

I heard clanging gongs outside and soon the banging of steel doors as more prisoners were put into cells. And little by little, through it all, I made out a low, eager murmur.

"Say," inquired a drunken old voice. "Who are all you d.a.m.n fools? What is this party, anyhow?"

"It is a revolution!" a sharp little voice replied. And at that, from all sides other voices broke out. Then from his cell our musical friend again started up the singing, his strained tenor voice rising high over all. The song rose in volume, grew more intense.

"Heigh! Quit that noise!" a policeman shouted.

"Aw, let 'em alone," said another. "They'll soon work it off."

But we seemed to be only working it up. Up and up, song followed song, and then short impa.s.sioned speeches came out of cells, and there was applause. A voice asked each one of us to name his nationality, and we found we were Americans, Irish, Scotch and Germans, Italians and Norwegians, and three of us were Lascars and one of us was a Coolie.

Then there were cheers for the working cla.s.s all over the world, and after that a call for more singing. And now, as one of the songs died away, we heard from the woman's part of the jail the young girls singing in reply.

And slowly as I listened to those songs that rose and swelled and beat against those walls of steel, I felt once more the presence of that great spirit of the crowd.

"That spirit will go on," I thought. "No jail can stop the thing it feels!"

And at last with a deep, warm certainty I felt myself where I belonged.

CHAPTER XVII

Early in the evening I was taken out to the visitor's room, and there I found Eleanore's father. When he saw me, Dillon smiled.

"Do you know where you are?" he asked. "You're not in the Bastille--or even Libby Prison. You're in the Jefferson Market Jail."

"It hasn't felt that way," I said.

"Probably not. But it is that way, and there's Eleanore to be thought of."

"Eleanore will understand."

I saw his features tighten. I noticed now that his face was drawn, as though he, too, had been through a good deal.

"Yes," he said, "she understands. But it's a bit tough on her, isn't it?

Jail is not quite in her line."

I felt my throat contracting:

"I know all that. I'm sorry enough--on her account----"

"Then let's get out of this," he said. "I've brought you bail. No use staying in here all night."

"None at all," I agreed. "I want to get back to the waterfront. We're going to issue an answer to this. They'll need me for the writing."

Dillon watched me a moment.

"You won't be allowed to do that," he said. "They're under martial law down there."

I looked up at him quickly:

"The troops are here?"

"Yes," he replied, and there was a pause.

"These arrests, this riot," I said a little huskily. "Weren't they all framed up ahead? They needed the riot to get in the troops."

"The troops are here."

"Rather d.a.m.nable. Do you think the people on the docks will just sit back and take it all?"

"They'll have to," he said gently. "The world's work has been clogged up a little. It's to go on again now."

On the street outside he took my hand:

"My boy, when this is over we'll get together, you and I."

"All right--when it's over," I said.

The Farm that night again changed to my eyes. It was now an orderly village of tents, two regiments of militia were here, and their sentries reached for a mile to the north watching the big companies' docks.

I walked up along the line and had talks with some of the sentries. I remember one in particular, a thin, nervous little man, a shoe-clerk in a department store. Every work-day for six years he had fitted shoes on ladies' feet; he had been doing it all that morning. And now here he was down on the waterfront with only the stars above him and great shadowy s.p.a.ces all around, out of which at any moment he expected rushes by strikers. These strikers to him were not human, they were "foreigners,"

for the moment gone mad, to be treated very much as mad dogs. And here he was all by himself, his nerves on edge, with a gun in his hands. The absurdity of that gun in his hands! And the serious danger.

I went into many tenements, into homes I had come to know in the strike.

And they, too, were different now. Their princ.i.p.al leaders taken away and their headquarters closed by the police, the disorganization was complete. That spirit they had relied upon, that strange new spirit of the ma.s.s which they had created by coming together, was now dead--and each one felt the weakness of being alone, the weakness of his separate self. Blindly they fought against their despair. I found them packing tenement rooms, gathering instinctively in search of their great friend, the crowd.

But from such gatherings as these, the weaker, the more timid and the wiser kept away. Rash spirits led these meetings, and here was the same hot pa.s.sion that I had felt back in the jail. These people did not want to think, the time for thinking had gone by. They wanted to act, to do something quick. Their minds were fiercely set on the "scabs," the police and the militia.

Their strike was not yet lost. Their friends and sympathizers were working hard that very night to get their leaders out on bail. In Was.h.i.+ngton a House committee was striving still to compel arbitration.

Everywhere the more moderate spirits were drawing together, trying to work out something safe.

But these people did not know this. They were in their tenements, they were scattered far apart. They only knew how they had been clubbed, that three had been killed and many more wounded, and that now the troops were here. And the more fiery ones among them were feeling only one thing now, that when you are hit you must hit back, you must show you're not scared, you must show you're a man.

And so on the next morning, no women and no children but huge, silent throngs of men drifted out of the tenements down to the docks and moved slowly along the sentry lines.