The acoustic tubes seemed to swell out with the gallop
of words. The electric wire filled the silence of the room with the
palpitations of its mysterious life. The bland Chief was no longer
occupied with his guests. They conjectured that he was behind them, his
mouth at the telephone, conversing with various officials some distance
off. Yet the urbane and well-spoken hero was not abandoning for one
moment his candied courtesy.
"Will you be kind enough to tell me when you are ready to begin?" they
heard him saying to a distant officer. "I shall be much pleased to
transmit the order."
Don Marcelo felt a slight nervous tremor near one of his legs; it was
Lecour, on the qui vive over the approaching novelty. They were going
to begin firing; something was going to happen that he had never seen
before. The cannons were above their heads; the roughly vaulted roof
was going to tremble like the deck of a ship when they shot over it. The
room with its acoustic tubes and its vibrations from the telephones was
like the bridge of a vessel at the moment of clearing for action. The
noise that it was going to make! . . . A few seconds flitted by that
to them seemed unusually long . . . and then suddenly a sound like
a distant peal of thunder which appeared to come from the clouds.
Desnoyers no longer felt the nervous twitter against his knee.
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