"Gee!" murmured one of the X Q K boys, who had come in late and was uninformed. "Gee, I ain't been a-drinkin' a thing--what in the name o' pity ails that gal!"
"Great Scott; she gives me the mauley-grubs! Ugh!" and his companion shivered. But save for these murmured comments, the crowd was intensely still.
Suddenly, about the middle of the street, Columbia's forward movement slackened, checked altogether. This was not unexpected, for midway the rockets fastened about her waist, and upon her crown were to be discharged. The manner in which these latter went off brought shrieks and groans from the crowd below. They fizzed up into Columbia's face, they burned against her bodice, they struck her arms. "Oh! oh! Poor soul! she'll have her eyes put out! She'll be killed!" cried a woman's voice from the street.
"I might 'a' known better than to trust that fool Gilbert with them fireworks," groaned old Frosty. "That there girl is worth more'n a hundred dollars a month to me. If I was to take her East I could hire her out for two hundred, easy, an' here she's likely to get all crippled up, so's't she won't never be no account."
Columbia was the only personage unmoved by all the fiery demonstrations; she stood rigid, looking strangely massive and tall, till the last rocket had spent itself. Then her progress began again with a sort of jerk. A shudder went over her frame, the pole wavered in her hands--those hands that seemed so limp and lifeless--she tottered, made a violent movement with her head, then swayed out sidewise and fell--holding the pole tight in her hands!
And the strangest sound went up from that big assembly, a mingled sound of groans and smothered outcries, and also what one might have sworn--had it not seemed impossible--was wild hysteric laughter.
Gess and Tell and Eddie Beach, luxuriating in Troy's permission to "holler as much as they pleased," emitted shrieks that would have chilled the blood of any whom this strange spectacle had not already terrified.
For, instead of falling to the ground twenty feet below, as would have been natural, and lying there, a mangled body, Columbia hung to the wire, a mad, fantastic, incredible spectacle, head downward, in a blaze of inverted patriotic splendor!