The Battle of the Lamps
can't put two hundred men in nine places at once. If they're ousted from Pump Street they're flying somewhere. If they're not flying past the church they're flying past the Works. And so we have them. We business men should have no chance at all except that cleverer people than we get bees in their bonnets that prevent them from reasoning properly—so we reason alone. And so I, who am comparatively stupid, see things as God sees them, as a vast machine. My God, what's this?" And he clapped his hands to his eyes and staggered back.
Then through the darkness he cried in a dreadful voice—
"Did I blaspheme God?—I am struck blind."
"What?" wailed another voice behind him, the voice of a certain Wilfred Jarvis of North Kensington.
"Blind!" cried Buck; "blind!"
"I'm blind, too!" cried Jarvis, in an agony.
"Fools, all of you," said a gross voice behind them; "we're all blind. The lamps have gone out."
"The lamps—but why? where?" cried Buck, turning furiously in the darkness. "How are we to get on? How are we to chase the enemy? Where have they gone?"
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