第184章

As it was quite evident that the crowd meant mischief - many of them had their pockets filled with stones and were armed with sticks -several of the Socialists were in favour of going to meet the van to endeavour to persuade those in charge from coming, and with that object they withdrew from the crowd, which was already regarding them with menacing looks, and went down the road in the direction from which the van was expected to come.They had not gone very far, however, before the people, divining what they were going to do, began to follow them and while they were hesitating what course to pursue, the Socialist van, escorted by five or six men on bicycles, appeared round the corner at the bottom of the hill.

As soon as the crowd saw it, they gave an exultant cheer, or, rather, yell, and began running down the hilt to meet it, and in a few minutes it was surrounded by a howling mob.The van was drawn by two horses;there was a door and a small platform at the back and over this was a sign with white letters on a red ground: `Socialism, the only hope of the Workers.'

The driver pulled up, and another man on the platform at the rear attempted to address the crowd, but his voice was inaudible in the din of howls, catcalls, hooting and obscene curses.After about an hour of this, as the crowd began pushing against the van and trying to overturn it, the terrified horses commenced to get restive and uncontrollable, and the man on the box attempted to drive up the hill.

This seemed to still further infuriate the horde of savages who surrounded the van.Numbers of them clutched the wheels and turned them the reverse way, screaming that it must go back to where it came from; several of them accordingly seized the horses' heads and, amid cheers, turned them round.

The man on the platform was still trying to make himself heard, but without success.The strangers who had come with the van and the little group of local Socialists, who had forced their way through the crowd and gathered together close to the platform in front of the would-be speaker, only increased the din by their shouts of appeal to the crowd to `give the man a fair chance'.This little bodyguard closed round the van as it began to move slowly downhill, but they were not sufficiently numerous to protect it from the crowd, which, not being satisfied with the rate at which the van was proceeding, began to shout to each other to `Run it away!' `Take the brake off!'

and several savage rushes were made with the intention of putting these suggestions into execution.

Some of the defenders were hampered with their bicycles, but they resisted as well as they were able, and succeeded in keeping the crowd off until the foot of the hill was reached, and then someone threw the first stone, which by a strange chance happened to strike one of the cyclists whose head was already bandaged - it was the same man who had been hit on the Sunday.This stone was soon followed by others, and the man on the platform was the next to be struck.He got it right on the mouth, and as he put up his handkerchief to staunch the blood another struck him on the forehead just above the temple, and he dropped forward on his face on to the platform as if he had been shot.

As the speed of the vehicle increased, a regular hail of stones fell upon the roof and against the sides of the van and whizzed past the retreating cyclists, while the crowd followed close behind, cheering, shrieking out volleys of obscene curses, and howling like wolves.

`We'll give the b--rs Socialism!' shouted Crass, who was literally foaming at the mouth.

`We'll teach 'em to come 'ere trying to undermined our bloody morality,' howled Dick Wantley as he hurled a lump of granite that he had torn up from the macadamized road at one of the cyclists.

They ran on after the van until it was out of range, and then they bethought themselves of the local Socialists; but they were nowhere to be seen; they had prudently withdrawn as soon as the van had got fairly under way, and the victory being complete, the upholders of the present system returned to the piece of waste ground on the top of the hill, where a gentleman in a silk hat and frockcoat stood up on a little hillock and made a speech.He said nothing about the Distress Committee or the Soup Kitchen or the children who went to school without proper clothes or food, and made no reference to what was to be done next winter, when nearly everybody would be out of work.

These were matters he and they were evidently not at all interested in.But he said a good deal about the Glorious Empire! and the Flag!