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Stern was especially curious to note the effect of his Pulverite, not only on the building itself but on the square. This effect exceeded his expectations. Less than two hundred feet of the tower now stood and the whole western facade was but a mass of cracked and gaping ruin.
"I've never yet found a man who would willingly stand by and see me build Pulverite, much less a woman. It's frightful, this stuff is! Don't be ashamed to tell me; are you afraid?" For a long moment the girl looked at him. "Afraid with you?" said she. An hour passed.
"They've got up, some of them somehow!" Stern cried. "They'll be at our throats, here, in a moment! Load! Load! You shoot I'll give 'em Pulverite!" No time, now, for caution. While the girl hastily threw in more cartridges, Stern gathered up all the remaining vials of the explosive. These, garnered along his wounded arm which clasped them to his body, made a little bristling row of death.
Now that the attack was really at hand, he felt a strange and sudden sense of helplessness. And with a bitter curse he shook his fist at the dark forest across the canyon where even as he looked he saw a movement of crouching, furtive things; he heard a dull thump-thump as of clubs beating hollow logs. "You devils!" he execrated. "Oh, for a ton of Pulverite to drop among you!"
He knew that, for a few brief, all-precious moments, the way might possibly be clear to come and go to get water to save Beatrice and himself from the thirst tortures to procure the one necessary thing for the making of his Pulverite. His heart gave a great, up-bounding leap. "Look, Beatrice!" cried he, his voice ringing out over the terror-stricken things. "Look we're gods! While this lasts gods!
Then rose a cry, a shriek long-drawn and ghastly, that climbed till it broke in a bubbling, choking gasp. Came a sharp clicking sound, a quick scuffle, a grunt; then silence once more. And all at once the drums crashed; and the dance began again, madder, more obscenely hideous than ever. "Voodoo!" gulped Stern. "Obeah-work! And and the quicker I get my Pulverite to working, the better!"
And now, under the circle of light cast by the hooded lamp upon the table, there in that bare, wrecked office-home of theirs, the Pulverite was coming to its birth. Already at the bottom of the metal dish lay a thin yellow cloud, something that looked like London fog on a December morning.
No sound of pursuit, no howling now. Dead calm. Not even the drum-beat in the forest, far below. "Beatrice! Where are you? Beatrice!" His heart leaped gladly as he heard her answer. "Oh! Are you safe? Thank God! I I was afraid I didn't know " To him she ran along the dark passageway. "No more!" she panted. "No more Pulverite here in the building!" pleaded she.
The main thing, now, is whether we attack or wait?" "Attack? Now?" "I don't think much of going up-stairs without that pail of water. We'll have a frightful time with thirst, to say nothing of not being able to make the Pulverite. Water we must have! If it weren't for your being here, I'd mighty soon wade into that bunch and see who wins! But well, I haven't any right to endanger "
"No; there must be some quicker and more drastic way! Even dynamite or Pulverite could never reach them all, swarming over there through miles of forest. Only one thing can stand against them fire! "With fire we must sweep and purge the world, even though we destroy it! With fire we must sweep the world!" Stern was not long in carrying out his plan.
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