Hendrik radiated battle. The derelicts took on human traits as their eyes lit up with visions of pillage. Fleming grasped a heavy schooner in each hand. Mulligan had his eye on three bottles of whisky and, for the first time in years, was using his mind—planning the get-away.
The proprietor saw all this and also perceived that he could not afford a victory. It was much cheaper to give them seven cents worth of spoiled rations. Therefore he decided in favor of humanity.
"Do what I told you, Jake," he said, with the smile of a man who has inveigled friends into accepting over-expensive Christmas presents. "Let 'em have the rest of the lunch—all they want." He smiled again, much pleased with his kindly astuteness. He was a constructive statesman and would be famous for longevity.
But the sandwich-men swaggered about, realizing that under the leadership of the boss they had won; they had obtained something to which they had no right; by threats of force they had secured food; the boss had made men of them. They therefore crowned Hendrik king. The instinctive and immemorial craving of all men for a father manifests itself—in republics that have forgotten God—in the election of the great promisers and the great confiscators to the supreme power. History records that no dynasty was ever founded except by a man who fought both for and with his followers. The men that merely fought for their fellows have uniformly died by the most noble and inspiring death of all—starvation. Names and posthumous addresses not known.
When not a scrap remained on any of the platters, Hendrik called his men to him and told them:
"Meet me at the sign-painter's, corner Twenty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue next Friday night after seven. We'll be open till midnight. Be sure and bring your boards with you."
"We gotter give 'em up before we can get paid," remonstrated Mulligan. "If we don't we don't eat."
"That's right!" assented a half-dozen.
"Bring them!" said Hendrik. The time to check a mutiny is before it begins.
"A' right!" came in a chorus of fourteen heroic voices.