III


We went on the Grand Stand, which was packed with men whose eyes were
fixed, with an unconscious but intense effort, on a common object. Among
the men were a few women in furs and wraps, equally absorbed. Nobody
took any notice of us as we insinuated our way up a rickety flight of
wooden stairs, but when by misadventure we grazed a human being the
elbow of that being shoved itself automatically and fiercely outwards,
to repel. I had an impression of hats, caps, and woolly overcoats
stretched in long parallel lines, and of grimy raw planks everywhere
presenting possibly dangerous splinters, save where use had worn them
into smooth shininess. Then gradually I became aware of the vast field,
which was more brown than green. Around the field was a wide border of
infinitesimal hats and pale faces, rising in tiers, and beyond this
border fences, hoardings, chimneys, furnaces, gasometers,
telegraph-poles, houses, and dead trees. And here and there, perched in
strange perilous places, even high up towards the sombre sky, were more
human beings clinging. On the field itself, at one end of it, were a
scattered handful of doll-like figures, motionless; some had white
bodies, others red; and three were in black; all were so small and so
far off that they seemed to be mere unimportant casual incidents in
whatever recondite affair it was that was proceeding. Then a whistle
shrieked, and all these figures began simultaneously to move, and then
I saw a ball in the air. An obscure, uneasy murmuring rose from the
immense multitude like an invisible but audible vapour. The next instant