Fyatt didn’t see him, and the American looked over the vast assembly of natives in the burning light. On a raised frame toward the center, a Sikh speaker stood. Dicky could hear his words, but did not understand. He saw, however, that the coming of the soldiers had interrupted the tenor of the speech and that many of the people were frightened and drawing away. An English officer beside him, after listening a moment, spoke with an ironical laugh: “_We have nothing to fear. Sarkar is our father and our mother. Government would not injure its children_----” Dicky realized that the young officer had quoted a translation of words the Sikh speaker had just spoken to the people--from twelve to fifteen thousand in the _maidan_, he reckoned. All faces were now turned to the soldiers--waves of faces. It was as if the color of a tree had changed by a steady pressure of wind that showed the under side of all the leaves. A nervous laugh from the young Englishman who had interpreted; then from General Fyatt, the low single sentence: “You may give the order.” “Fire!” the young officer called to his Gurkhas. To Richard Cobden it was quite incredible, but another officer on the far side of the lane repeated the command, and the line of leveled rifles spurted on either side. Dicky winced at the crashes. He had been in the firing pits many times, but one can never remember how these concussions close by hurt one’s head and spine.... Of course, they were firing blanks. This was Martial Law. The people had been ordered not to assemble and they had disobeyed--twelve thousand of them, or more. General Fyatt had undertaken to impress upon them that his word was Law, Martial Law. Of course, this was also the English answer to April 10th, at the Hallgate Bridge. A bit uncouth to stampede a big crowd like this. Surely Fyatt couldn’t have realized what this firing of blanks would mean. They were trampling themselves to death already. This wasn’t English humor. It was more like the fool who yells, “Fire!” in a packed theater. The great open place was walled. There were no broad exits. The several narrow vents had locked of themselves by the pressing of bodies against them. “Why,” Dicky thought, with a wrench and shiver at the sight of the monster throng in the process of constricting itself, “why, this is a womb of death!” Cries were sustained at the end of this April holiday--cries of battle and accident and pestilence, the cries from a great ship going down. Dicky thought of a pot beginning to boil. He thought of a yard of leaves suddenly caught in a swirling wind. He thought of all the old stale similes used and over-used since bloodshed began, and his mind sank back in the hollow of hopelessness. It couldn’t be told, but his faculties tried again and again, even though his heart sobbed with the people.