292 IN'THE VISION OF GOD
banks of the river. Now commenced a movement like the
huge waves rising in the ocean. Thousands of pilgrims made
a rush towards the coveted Brahma kund. The two sadhus
and Ramdas had to join the rabble. The sadhus, to prevent
their being separated from each other, had their hands
interlocked with one another's. The crowd had to move
very slowly, sometimes they took more than five minutes
to cover a yard of ground.
Hundreds of police were present to maintain order and
prevent accidents. On and on they went. At certain stages
the crowds halted for over half-an-hour. No further
movement was possible on account of the march of a thick
crowd from the opposite direction. Thousands of people
at the back pressed on them. They were crushed and
squeezed as a sugarcane in the juice-extracting machine.
The sadhus bellowed forth. The old sadhu who had newly
joined them was frightened out of his wits.
"I don't want bath in the kund or any such blessed
thing," he cried out. "I would I were out of this insuffer-
able condition with my bones and skin whole."
But there was no escape. They had bargained for the
experience and they must go through it willy-nilly. The
sadhu's one thought was freedom from the most uncomfor-
table situation in which he found himself, and he counted
such freedom as nothing short of immortality itself!
At last, they reached a square open place on a broad
road, where a number of police, with the help of their long
lathis used for fencing, had kept at bay two on-rushing
crowds from opposite directions of the road. The sadhus
crouched close to a sweetmeat shop on the road-side. A
moment had not passed, when the lathi fence gave way in
one direction, owing to the enormous pressure of the crowd,
and what ensued was pandemonium. Cries, yells, stamp-
ing and cursing rent the air. The old sadhu, who was
close to Ramdas, giving himself up for lost, gave out a
piercing shriek.