it was worth going down into that seething crowd to see the floor of the exchange at that moment. a thousand men were swaying about one spot of it, and at the instant of ten they broke into a deafening chorus of yells.
transatlantic and suburban! transatlantic and suburban! there was no other stock thought of that day—there were many of the smaller firms that had closed their doors, not daring to do business on such a market. and those who hung over the ticker read nothing but t. & s.,—1571?4—1571?2—1573?8,—and so on and on. the fluctuating of t. & s. was the swaying of two monsters that wrestled in a death embrace; and van rensselaer, as he fed his eyes upon it, was himself a free man once more. horror haunted him no longer; the excitement drove the fumes of the liquor from[115] his brain, and he was drunk, but with the battle ecstasy. to him every figure meant a blow, as with a war-axe, at foes of his; he could fancy that this stroke was his father's, and that his own, and that shrike's, and so on. he clenched his hands and muttered swiftly, as one watching a fight: "give it to them! down with them! down with them!" and meanwhile the ticker raced on: t. & s. 100—1571?2; t. & s. 500—1575?8; t. & s. 3000—1573?8; t. & s. 10,000—1571?4; and so almost without a pause. down below in the street shrieked a frantic mob; it was like looking into a huge well packed full of writhing bodies.
so half an hour crept by, and t. & s. still stood the onslaught; van rensselaer had gotten help, but evidently so had the syndicate. it was as if wall street had divided into two armies, and vowed no quarter. and they fought on; the time crept along to 10.45; t. & s. was moving at last—it was 1573?4, the highest mark of the day! van rensselaer took another great gulp of the liquor and pounded his bell.
[116]"listen to me," he said swiftly to the breathless clerk. "the crisis has come—go outside as fast as you can and tell somebody that the arkansas legislature has doubled the freight rates on the t. & s. there'll be a dozen people doing the same. and then wait five minutes—not a second more, do you hear? and let it out that i am breaking t. & s., and that the governor's with me, and shrike, and the rest of them."
the man nodded and disappeared, and van rensselaer turned once more to the ticker. there was a moment's pause, and he went to the window and stared out. then it began again—t. & s. still holding. van rensselaer knew that the ticker was some minutes behind the market, and he cursed with impatience. then he took a pencil and began figuring, as well as he could, with his trembling hands.
he had put twenty-seven million dollars into this thing; he had bought the margins of something like a million and three-quarters shares. that was more shares than were in existence, actually; but under wall[117] street's systems of speculating that is a common enough state of affairs. the fact that impressed him was that every point that t. & s. went down he stood to win a million and three-quarters of dollars from the men he had been fighting. and if instead it went up, and stayed up the time limit, he owed the same sum instead. and then suddenly the ticker clicked again; it was five minutes of eleven, and t. & s. still holding,—1575?8—1573?8—1571?2. he could bear the thing no more; he drained the bottle and sprang out of the door. in a few moments more he was on the street.
