METROPOLIS "The woman," he shouted with a how~ "who saved my little children-I" And he flung himself upon the machine with grinding teeth.... "Tell me-I" said Freder, almost softly. It was as if he did not want to waste fln atom of strength. His face was a white stone in which his two eyes flamed like jewels. He jumped to the wheel of the little car in which Iosaphat had come. For the pump works lay at the extreme end of the great Metropolis. It was still night. The car started. "We must go terribly out of our way," said Josaphat, fixing
the flashlight. "Many bridges between the houseblocks are blown up... ." "Tell me:' said Freder. His teeth met, chattering, as if he were cold.
"I don't know who found it out.... Probably the women, who were thinking of their children and wanted to get home. You can't get anything out of the raving multitude. But anyway: When they saw the black water running towards them from the shafts of the underground railway, and when they realised that tHe pump-works, the safe-guard of their city, had been destroyed by the stopping of the machines, then they went mad with despair. They say that some mothers, blind and deaf to all remonstrance, tried. as if possessed, to dive down through the flooded shafts, and just the terrible absoluteness of the futility of any attempt at rescue has turned them into beasts and they lust for re~~nge ... ," " Revenge, , , on whom? "On the girl who seduced them..... the girl.~ •.• ?" Co on.. " 7reder. th~. engine can't keep up that speed, .. .Go on.... "I do not know how it happened that the girl ran into their hands. 1 was on my way to you when 1 saw a woman running across the cathedral square, with her hair Hying, the
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