Another Englishman followed him, venting an hysterical laughter--both faces Dicky had seen in one of the motor cars. For an instant it seemed the only sane action left in the world--to rush out into the lane the way he had come, as these Englishmen were doing, to cover face and ears, to rush forth, to continue to the ends of India and the uttermost parts of the earth. Dicky started to follow, but turned back.... No, he wouldn’t rush off to be sick. This was the wall that he was to come to. It was something else.... What was it? Oh, yes, it was the Big Story that he had been pacing up and down the world to find.... Of course, it would be like this. He would find himself in the midst of it, without knowing at first. He ducked forward under the rifles of three _sepoys_ to reach the staff. He couldn’t go away without paying his respects to the General. Was not this what he had started out for to-day? He stumbled over a soldier on his knees--a Baluchee, vomiting with all his might. He saw Fyatt a few paces forward--Fyatt, grizzled, square-shouldered, behind a field glass. A mocking laugh rose in Richard Cobden’s heart. A man didn’t need a field glass to cover the _maidan_. One could see the faces; one could see the fallen; one could see the writhing cords of human bodies. Oh, no, one didn’t need a field glass. One could see the thousands on the _maidan_ now--as one up-turned face, the face of a child betrayed, but unable to believe. Fyatt merely chose this way to cover his own face. His back looked stiff and blocky as he swung slowly around behind the glasses. His shoulders and neck didn’t move. He turned from the hips, Dicky perceived, as he touched the General’s sleeve. XLVI THE HOOKED MAN A NOTE of unison had come to the great cry from the people at this moment--one note that tugged at the white man’s soul--the deadly hurt of a child.... General Fyatt was not tall for a soldier, with square lines of figure; square of chin and temple and shoulder and elbow, pivoting on his hips. But there were two remarkable curves in the ensemble, the sidewise curve of the hooked nose and the bow of his booted legs. Now as the American stood by, a new key presented itself to the man--that hooked smile. It opened other hooks--hook of the eye-corner, as well as the corner of the mouth and the bent nose, hook of the fingers on the field glass. The face turned to him--a white welt from the glasses on the bridge of the nose. Dicky felt the horrible slowness over everything--that somehow there was not in this man’s volition the power to order the firing to cease. No recognition showed in Fyatt’s eyes. He stared. It was like the man who had stared at him on the docks in Bombay, when he heard that America had entered the War. “Well, sir!”