Thus things stood on Thursday evening, but Friday, day of ill-omen, disproved all the promise of the preceding day. Crop damage and heavy rain in the cotton belt both served their turn; the war scare was duly aired again; the report of the British Atlantic, so far from being what was expected, on the contrary not only showed a very considerable decrease in net earnings, but stated moreover that the complete electrification of the system would be for the present indefinitely postponed; rumor bred rumor, and the whole market, under the lead of the railroad stocks and the coppers, plunged heavily downward.
Amid all the excitement and confusion, once again it was an easy matter to distinguish the hand of the man or men who had led the attack on the Konahassett on the preceding Wednesday. The stock again from the very first acted badly; half an hour after the opening it had dropped to seventeen, and then a sudden flood of selling orders carried it down, and still farther down, until at eleven o'clock it was quoted at thirteen and a half.
Gordon, for the first time anxious and plainly doubtful of the result, fought his fight with all the cool daring and stubborn courage which had won him his place in the market world. One barrier after another was interposed in the effort to stem the tide, and one after another was ruthlessly swept away. About noon, for the first time in years, Gordon in person took the floor of the Exchange, and, knowing full well that he was destined to defeat, none the less bravely fought out his battle to the bitter end. Just once, indeed, early in the afternoon, it seemed for the moment that he might, after all, have a chance to win, and then came still another drive; stop orders were at last uncovered, and the battle, in a short half hour, became first a retreat, then a slaughter, and finally a hopeless, panic-stricken rout.
Gordon himself, pale as death, authorized the giving forth of the news that the fight was lost; that it was every man for himself; in the jargon of the street, made to do service to worried brokers in time of hopeless panic, that "one man's guess was as good as another's."
In the ensuing wild scramble to unload, Konahassett common was buffeted about the room, kicked and beaten and dragged in the dust, with none so poor to do it reverence. Once even it broke par for the first time in its history, a lot of a thousand shares selling at four and seven-eighths, and at the close it had only staggered weakly back to seven and a half. A great day for the Combine, if all the rumors were true; a great day for the reporters and their news columns; a day that had crushed and crumbled Gordon's little army into oblivion, spreading ruin and disaster in its wake.