In the few seconds that had
elapsed it seemed that the streets had become full of running policemen,
and Hamilton looked back.
As he did so, he saw one of the men in the nearest group stagger
sideways and stand for an instant alone in the center of the street.
There was the sharp bark of a sawed-off revolver, and the wounded man
just reached the shelter of a doorway as the bullet sang over the spot
on which he had stood a second before.
The sight unnerved Hamilton. He clutched the reporter's arm.
"Chinese, Camorrists, sweatshop workers, and negroes!" he cried, a
hysterical note in his voice. "Are there no Americans in an American
city?"
The reporter grasped his shoulder and pointed to where, a block or two
away, the towering framework of a Titanic building pierced the sunlit
air, far above the sordid savagery of the human rat-holes near by.
Guiding monster beams into place, sure-set upon the frailest foothold,
forms of men, made tiny by the distance, were silhouetted against the
sky.
"The post of honor is the post of danger," he said; "it is in work like
that, where skill is linked to daring, where brain is joined to nerve,
that the Yankee stands.
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