“Well, where do you stand?”

Frank Swan answered for the crowd:  “The panic is in full swing.  She’s a cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper.  They’re down 40 or over on an average.  Anti-People’s is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken dam.  Barry Conant’s house and a dozen other of Reinhart’s have gone under.  His banks and trust companies are going every minute.  The whole Street will be overboard before the close.  The governing committee has just called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the Exchange over to-day and to-morrow.”

Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving reports from his mates.

There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through.  He was cool, masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the ocean’s rage and the wind’s howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the craft its rudder.  “Jim, come over to the Exchange.”  The crowd followed along.  “We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,” he said to me.  “I know, Jim, you understand it all, but I must tell you how sorrowful I am that in my madness I should have so forgotten my admiration, respect, and love for you, yes, and my gratitude to you, as to say what I did.  I’ll do the only thing I can to atone.  I will stop this panic and undo as much as possible of my work; and now that I have wrecked Reinhart I am through with this game forever, yes, through forever.”

He pressed my hand in his strong, honest one and strode into the Exchange ahead of the crowd.  All was chaos, although the trading had toned down to a sullen desperation.  So many houses, banks, and trust companies had failed that no man knew whether the member he had traded with early in the day would on the morrow be solvent enough to carry out his trades.  The man who had been “long” in the morning, and had sold out before the crash, and who thought he now had no interest in the panic, found himself with his stock again on hand, because of the failure of the one to whom he had sold, and the price cut in two.  The man who was “short” and who a few minutes before had been eagerly counting his profits now knew that they had been turned to loss, because the man from whom he had borrowed his short stocks for delivery would be in no condition to repay for them, the next day, when they should be returned to him.  The “short” man was himself, therefore, “long” stocks he had bought to cover his “short” sale.  In depressing the price he had been working against his own pocket instead of against the bulls he had thought he was opposing.  All was confusion and black despair.  There is, indeed, no blacker place than the floor of the Stock Exchange after a panic cyclone has swept it, and is yet lingering in its corners, while the survivors of its fury do not know whether or not it will again gather force.

Chapter IX.