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He must play his part in the great conflict like a man--like a free,
responsible man. The antagonism presented itself as a picture. On the
one hand those easy gigantic mail-clad figures of the morning--one saw
them now in a different light--on the other this little black-clad
gesticulating creature under the limelight, that pigmy thing with its
ordered flow of melodious persuasion, its little, marvellously
penetrating voice, John Caterham--"Jack the Giant-killer." They must all
unite to "grasp the nettle" before it was "too late."
III.
The tallest and strongest and most regarded of all the children of the
Food were the three sons of Cossar. The mile or so of land near
Sevenoaks in which their boyhood passed became so trenched, so dug out
and twisted about, so covered with sheds and huge working models and all
the play of their developing powers, it was like no other place on
earth. And long since it had become too little for the things they
sought to do. The eldest son was a mighty schemer of wheeled engines; he
had made himself a sort of giant bicycle that no road in the world had
room for, no bridge could bear. There it stood, a great thing of wheels
and engines, capable of two hundred and fifty miles an hour, useless
save that now and then he would mount it and fling himself backwards
and forwards across that cumbered work-yard. He had meant to go around
the little world with it; he had made it with that intention, while he
was still no more than a dreaming boy. Now its spokes were rusted deep
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