Page 174 - BraveNewWorld

174 IDPH

Acting on the word’s suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted cords from its
nail behind the door and shook it at his tormentors.

There was a yell of ironical applause.
Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line
wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood
firm. The consciousness of being in overwhelming force had given these sight-
seers a courage which the Savage had not expected of them. Taken aback, he
halted and looked round.
“Why don’t you leave me alone?” There was an almost plaintive note in his
anger.
“Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!” said the man who, if the Savage we-
re to advance, would be the first to be attacked. He held out a packet. “They’re
really very good, you know,” he added, with a rather nervous smile of propita-
tion. “And the magnesium salts will help to keep you young.”
The Savage ignored his offer. “What do you want with me?” he asked, turning
from one grinning face to another. “What do you want with me?”

“The whip,” answered a hundred voices confusedly. “Do the whipping stunt.
Let’s see the whipping stunt.”
Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, “We-want-the whip,” shouted a
group at the end of the line. “We-want-the whip.”
Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot- fashion,
again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh
or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken. “We-want- the whip.”
They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the
sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours-
almost indefinitely. But at about the twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings we-
re startlingly interrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the
Hog’s Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards
of where the Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of sight-
seers and the lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the
shouting; then, as the machine touched the ground and the engines were tur-
ned off: “We-want-the whip; we- want-the whip,” broke out again in the same
loud, insistent monotone.
The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first a fair and ruddy- faced
young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young
woman.

At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started, recoiled, turned pale.

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