Here Waldron unlocked another door, this time a steel one, and--as they
both crowded through--pressed a hand to his dizzy head.

"Safe!" he gulped, slamming the door again. "They can't get us _here_,
at any rate, no matter what happens! This place is like a fort, and--"

His speech was interrupted by a dazing, deafening tumult of sound. The
earth trembled, and the laboratory, steel though it was, with concrete
facing, rocked on its foundation. A glare through the windows, quickly
fading, told them the building they had just quitted was now but a
smoking pile of ruin.

Flint gasped, unable to speak. Waldron, shaking and cowed, tried to
moisten his dry lips with a thick tongue.

"We--we weren't any too soon!" he gulped, without one thought of the
doomed scabs in the Administration Building. Stern justice was now
overtaking these wretches. False to the working-class, and eager to
serve the Air Trust--not only eager to serve, but zealous in any attack
on the proletariat, and by their very employment serving to rivet the
shackles on the world--now they were abandoned by their masters.

Between upper and nether millstone, moving with neither, they were
caught and crushed. And as the great building quivered, gaped wide
open, swayed and came thundering down in a vast pile of flame-lit ruin,
whence a volcanic burst of fire, smoke and dust arose, they perished
miserably, time-servers, cowards and self-seekers to the last.

But Flint and Waldron still survived. Though the very earth shook and
trembled with the roar of bombs, the crumbling of massive walls, the
rattle of volley-fire and the crashing of the terrible grenades that
mowed down hundreds as they spread their poisonous gas abroad--though
the shriek of projectiles, the thunder of the air-ship guns now sweeping
the sky in blind endeavor to shatter the attackers all swelled the
tumult to a frightful storm of terror and of death; they still lived,
cowered and cringed there in the bomb-proof steel-and-concrete of the
inner laboratories.

"Come, come!" Flint quavered, peering about him at the deserted room,
still glaring with electric light--the room now abandoned by all its
workers, who, members of Herzog's regiment, had run to take their posts
at the first signal of attack. "Come--this isn't safe enough, even here.
In--in there!"

He pointed toward a vault-like door, leading to the subterranean steel
chambers where Herzog eventually counted on storing some hundreds of
thousands of tons of liquid oxygen--the reserve-chambers, impregnable to
lightning, fire, frost or storm, to man's attacks or nature's--the
chambers blasted from the living rock, deep as the Falls themselves,
vacuum-lined, wondrous achievement of the highest engineering skill the
world could boast.

"There! There!" repeated Flint, plucking at the dazed Waldron's sleeve.
"Tool-steel and concrete, twenty-five feet thick--and vacuum chambers
all about--_there_ we can hide! There's safety! Come, come quick!"

Staring, white-faced (he who had been so red!) and dumb, Waldron
yielded. Together, furtive as the criminals they were, these two
world-masters slunk toward the steel door, while without, their empire
was crashing down in smoke, and flame, and blood!

They had almost reached it when a smash of glass at the far end of the
laboratory whipped them round, in keener terror.

Staring, wild-eyed, they beheld the crouching figure of Herzog. Running,
even as he cringed, he had upset a glass retort, which had shattered on
the concrete floor. And as he ran, he screamed:

"_They're in! They're coming! Quick--the steel vaults! Let me in, there!
Let me in!_"

The coward was now a maniac with terror, his face perfectly white,
writhen with panic, and with staring eyes that gleamed horribly under
the greenish vacuum-lights.

"Back, you! Get out!" roared Waldron, raising a fist. "We--"

A sudden belch of flame, outside, split the night with terrible
virescence. The whole steel building trembled and swayed. Some of its
girders buckled; and the east wall, nearest the oxygen-tanks, caved
inward as a mass of many tons was hurled against it.

A stunning concussion flung all three men to the floor; and, as they
fell, a withering heat-wave quivered through the place.

"The oxygen-tanks!" gasped Flint. "They're blown up--they're
burning--God help us!"

Scorching, yet still eager to live, he crawled on hands and knees toward
the steel door. Waldron dragged himself along, half-dead with terror.
Now, dripping gouts of inextinguishable fire were raining on the roof of
the building. A whirlwind of flame was sweeping all its eastern side;
and a glare like that of Hell itself seared the eyes of the fugitives.

Quivering, trembling, slavering, the old man and Waldron wrenched the
steel door open.

"_Me! Me! Let me in! Me! Save me!_" howled Herzog, dragging himself
toward them.

They only laughed derisively, with howls of demoniacal scorn.

"You slave! You cur!" shouted Waldron, and spat at him as he drew the
vault door shut. "You cringing dog--stay there, now, and face it!"

The great door boomed shut. In the cool of the winding stairway of steel
which led, lighted by electricity, to the trap-door and the ladder down
into the tremendous vaults, the world-masters breathed deeply once more,
respited from death.

Herzog, screaming like a fiend in torment, clawed at the impenetrable
steel door, raved, begged, entreated, and tore his fingers on the lock.

No answer, save the muffled echo of a jeer, from within.

_Boom!_

What was that?

Mad with terror though he was, he whirled about, and faced the room now
quivering with heat.

Even as he looked, a great gap yawned in the western wall, farthest from
the flame-belching oxygen-tank that had been struck.

Through this gap, pouring irresistibly as the sea, swept a tide of
attackers, storming the inner citadel of the infernal, world-strangling
Air Trust.

At the head of this victorious army, this flood triumphant of the
embattled proletaire, Herzog's staring eyes caught a moment's glimpse of
a dreaded face--the face of Gabriel Armstrong.

Gasping, the coward and tool of the world-masters made one supreme
decision. Close by, a rack of vials stood. He whirled to it, snatched
out a tiny bottle and waiting not even to draw the cork--craunched the
bottle, glass and all, in his fang-like, uneven teeth.

An instant change swept over him. His staring eyes closed, his head fell
forward, his whole body collapsed like an empty sack. He fell, twitched
once or twice, and was dead--dead ere the attackers could reach the door
of steel where his bestial masters had betrayed him.

Thus perished Herzog, coward and tool, a victim of the very forces he
himself had helped create.

And at the moment of his death, the masters he had cringed to and had
served, sneering with scorn at him even in their mortal terror, were
tremblingly descending the long metal ladder to the impregnable vaults
of steel below.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE STORMING OF THE WORKS.


Plunged into the abyss of mist and flame by the attack of the Air Trust
_épervier_, Gabriel had abandoned himself for lost. Death, mercifully
swift, he had felt could be his only fate; and with this thought had
come no fear, but only a wild joy that he had shared this glorious
battle, sure to end in victory! This was his only thought--this, and a
quick vision of Catherine.

Then, as he hurtled down and over, whirling drunkenly in the void, all
clear perception left him. Everything became a swift blur, a rushing
confusion of terrible wind, and lurid light, and the wild roar of myriad
explosions.

Came a shock, a sudden checking of the plunge, a long and rapid glide,
as the DeVreeland stabilizer of the machine, asserting its automatic
action, brought it to a level keel once more.

But now the engine was stopped. Gabriel, realizing that some chance
still existed to save his life, wrenched madly at his levers.

"If I can volplane down!" he panted, sick and dizzy, "there may yet be
hope!"

Hope! Yes, but how tenuous! What chance had he, coasting to earth at
that low level, to avoid the detonating bombs, the aerial shrapnel being
hurled aloft, the poisonous gas, the surface-fire?

Here, there and yonder, terrific explosions were shattering the echoes,
as the Air Trust batteries swept the fog with their aeroplane-destroying
missiles. Whither should he steer? He knew not. All sense of direction
was lost, nor could the compass tell him anything. A glance at the
barometric gauge showed him an altitude of but 850 feet, and this was
decreasing with terrible rapidity.

Strive as he might, he could not check the swift descent.

"God send me a soft place to fall on!" he thought, grimly, still
clinging to his machine and laboring to jockey it under control.

Close by, a thunderous detonation crashed through the mist. His machine
reeled and swerved, then plunged more swiftly still. All became vague,
to Gabriel--a dream--a nightmare!

_Crash!_

Flung from the seat, he sprawled through treetops, caught himself, fell
to a lower limb, slid off and landed among thick bushes; and through
these came to earth.

The wrecked 'plane, whirling away and down, fell crashing into the river
that rushed cascading by, and vanished in the firelit mist.

Stunned, yet half-conscious, Gabriel presently sat up and pressed his
right hand to his head. His left arm felt numb and useless; and when he
tried to raise it, he found it refused his will.

"Where am I, now, I'd like to know?" he muttered. "Not dead, anyhow--not
_yet_!"

A continuous roar of explosions shuddered the air, mingled with the
booming of the mighty Falls. Shouts and cheers and the rattle of
machine-guns assailed his ear. The glare of the search-lights, through
the mist and steam, was darkened momentarily by thick, greasy coils of
smoke, shot through by violent flashes of light as explosions took
place.

Gabriel struggled to his feet, and peered about him,

"Still alive!" said he. "And I must get back into the fight! That's all
that matters, now--the fight!"

He knew not, yet, where he was; but this mattered nothing. His machine
had, in fact, fallen near the river bank, in the eastern section of
Prospect Park, beyond the Goat Island bridge--this region of the Park
having been left outside the fortifications, in the extension of the Air
Trust plant.

The trees, here, had saved his life. Had he smashed to earth a hundred
yards further north, he would have been shattered against high walls and
roofs.

Still giddy, but sensing no pain from his injured left arm, Gabriel made
way toward the scene of conflict. He knew nothing of how the tide of
battle was going; nothing of his position; nothing as to what men he
would first meet, his comrades or the enemy.

But for these considerations he had no thought. His only idea, fixed and
grim, was "The fight!" Dazed though he still was, he nerved himself for
action.

And so, pressing onward through the livid glare, through the night
shattered by stupendous detonations, he drew his revolver and broke into
a run.

Strange evidences of the battle now became evident. He saw an unexploded
grenade lying beside a wounded man who grasped at him and moaned with
pain. Over a wrecked motor-car, greasy smoke was rising, as it burned.
Louder shouting drew him down a path to the left. Masses of moving
figures became dimly visible, through the mist. And now, stabs of fire
pierced the confusion and clamorous night.

Gabriel jerked up his revolver, as he ran, the terrible weapon shooting
bullets charged with hydrocyanic-acid gas.

A man rose before him, shouting.

Gabriel levelled the weapon; but a glimpse of red ribbon in the other's
coat brought it down again.

"Comrade!" cried he. "Where's the attack?"

The other pointed.

"Gabriel! Is that you?" he gasped, staring.

"Yes! I fell--machine smashed--come on!"

"Hurt?"

"No! Arm, maybe. No matter! God! What's this?"

Toward them a sudden swirl of men came sweeping, stumbling, shouting, in
pandemonium.

"Our men!" cried Gabriel, starting forward again. "We're being driven!
Rally, here! Rally!"

Beyond, a louder crackling sounded. Here, there, men plunged down. The
retreat was becoming a rout!

Yelling, Gabriel flung himself upon the men.

"Back there!" he vociferated. "Back, and at the walls! Come on, boys,
now! Come on!"

His voice, well known to nearly all, thrilled them again with new
determination. A shout rose up; it swelled, deepened, roared to majestic
volume.

Then the tide turned.

Back went the fighting men of the great Revolution. back at the
machine-guns, mounted in the breached walls.

Gabriel was caught and whirled along in that living tide. He found
himself at its crest, its foremost wave. Behind him, a roaring, rushing
river of men. Before the Inner Citadel.

Gathering speed and weight as it rolled up, the wave broke like an ocean
surge over a crumbling dyke.

Down went the Air Trust gunners and the guns, down, down to
annihilation!

Through the breach, foaming and swelling with irresistible power burst
the tides of victory.

Silenced now were the Trust guns. The steam-jets had none to man them.
Far aloft, a last explosion told the death story of the final
_épervier_.

Here and there, from windows and corners of the wrecked and blazing
plant, a little intermittent firing still continued; but now the hearts
of these Air Trust defenders--scabs, thugs and scourings of the
slum--had turned to water, in face of the triumphant army of the working
class.

They fled, those mercenaries, and all the ways and inner
strongholds--such as still were left--now lay open to Gabriel and his
comrades.

Lighted by the blazing buildings and the vast fire torch of an
oxygen-tank off to eastward, they stormed the final citadel, the steel
and concrete laboratories, heart and soul and center of the hellish
world-conspiracy.

Stormed it, as it began to blaze and crumble; stormed it, in search of
Flint and Waldron, would-be murderers of the world.

Stormed it, only to see Herzog gnash his teeth upon the flask, and
fall, and die; only to know that there, within the rock-hewn,
steel-lined tanks, below, their enemies had still outwitted them!

The swift onrush of the fire drove the victors back.

"_Out, comrades! Out of here_!" shouted Gabriel, facing the attackers.

None too soon. Hardly had they beaten a retreat, back into the vast
courtyard again, strewn with the dead, when a second oxygen tank
exploded, overwhelming the laboratory building with tons of flying
steel.

Leaping toward the zenith, a giant tongue of flame roared heavenward. So
intense the heat had now become, that the solid brick and concrete
walls, exposed to the direct verberation of the flame, began to crack
and crumble.

Gabriel ordered a general retreat of the attacking army. Victory was
won; and to stay near that gushing tornado of flame, with new explosions
bound to occur as the other oxygen tanks let go, must mean annihilation.

So the triumphant Army of the Proletaire fell back and back still
further, out into the wrecked and trampled Park, and all through the
city, where shattered buildings, many of them ablaze, and broken trees,
dead bodies, smashed ordnance and chaos absolute told something of the
story of that brief but terrible war.

Ringed round the perishing ruins of the Air Trust they stood, these
mute, thrilled thousands. Silence fell, now, as they watched the
roaring, ever-mounting flames that, whipped by the breeze, crashed
upward in long and cadenced tourbillions of white, of awful
incandescence.

And the river, ever-hurrying, always foaming on and downward to its
titanic plunge, sparkled with eerie lights in that vast glow. Its voice
of thunder seemed to chant the passing and the requiem of the Curse of
the World, Capitalism.




CHAPTER XXXVII.

DEATH IN THE PIT OF STEEL.


And Flint, now, what of him! And Waldron?

While the Air Trust plant was burning, crumbling, smashing down, what of
its masters, the masters of the world?

A sense of vast relief possessed them both, at first, as the steel door
clanged after them.

Now, for a time at least, they realized that they were safe, safe from
the People, safe from the awakened and triumphant Proletariat. Even now,
had they surrendered, they would have been spared; but nothing was
further from their thoughts than any treating with the despised and
hated enemy.

Foremost in the mind of each, now, was the thought that if they could
but stand siege, a day or so, the troops of the government--their
government and their troops, their own personal property--would
inevitably rescue them.

With this comforting belief, together they descended the long steel
staircase to the trap-door, passed through this, and climbed down the
metal ladder to the vast storage-vaults.

Here, everything was cool and quiet and well-lighted. Not yet had the
electric-generating plant been put out of action. Though all its workers
had either been drafted into the ranks of the Cosmos mercenaries, or
Herzog's regiments, or else had fled to hiding, still the huge turbines
and enormous dynamos were whirling, unattended. Thus, for the first few
minutes, in their living tomb, down over which the ruins of the now
white-hot laboratory-building had crashed, the world-masters had
electric light.

Reassured a little, they descended to the very bottom of the first huge
tank.

"God!" snarled Flint, as he breathed deeply and glared about him. "The
curs! The swine! To think of this, _this_ really happening! And to think
that if we hadn't got here just in time, they'd actually have--have used
violence on _us_--"

Waldron laughed brutally, his body still trembling and his face chalky.
His laugh echoed, hollowly, from the metal walls.

"You old fool!" he spat. "Canting old hypocrite to the last, eh?
Violence? What the devil do you expect? Rosewater and confetti? Violence
was all that ever held 'em, wasn't it? And when they slipped the leash,
naturally they retorted--that's all! Violence? You make me sick! Damned
lucky for us if we get through this yet, without violence, you whining
cur!"

Flint, for the first time hearing Waldron's honest opinion of him,
failed even to note it. All his panic-stricken ear had caught was the
note of hope, of survival.

Clutching eagerly at Waldron's sleeve, he cackled:

"If we get through? If we get through, you say? Then, in your opinion,
there _is_ a chance to get through? They can't get us here? We surely
shall be rescued?"

"Bah!" Waldron flung at him, some latent spark of courage still
smouldering in his sodden breast, whereas old Flint was craven to the
marrow. "You nauseate me! Afraid to die, eh? Well, so am I; but not so
damned paralyzed and sick with panic as all that! If you'd taken less
dope, the last twenty years, you'd have more nerve now, to face the
music! World-master, you? Eh? Playing the biggest game on earth--and
now, when things break bad, you squeal! Arrrh! You called me a quitter
once, you mealy-mouthed old Pecksniff! We'll see, now, who quits! We'll
see, at a show-down, who can face it, you or I!"

[Illustration: His fingers lost their hold--he dropped like a Plummet.]

Waldron's brutality, the hard, savage quality that all his life had made
him "Tiger" Waldron, now was beginning to reassert itself. His first
sheer panic over, a little manhood was returning. But as for Flint, no
manhood dwelt in him to be awakened. Instead, each moment found him more
abject and more pitiable. Like an old woman he now wrung his hands and
groaned, hysterically; and now he paced the steel floor of the vault
that was destined to be his tomb; and now he stopped again and stared
about him with wild eyes.

On all sides, sheer up a hundred feet or more, the smooth steel sides of
the vast oxygen tank rose, studded with long lines of rivets.

Near the top a dark aperture showed where the six-inch pipe joined the
tank; the pipe destined to fill it, when Herzog's last process--never,
now, to be completed--should have been done.

The huge floor, 150 feet in diameter, sloped gently downward toward the
center; and here yawned another pipe, covered by a grating--the pipe to
drain the liquid oxygen out to the pumping station.

So deeply set in the rock of the Niagara cliff was this stupendous
tank, and so cunningly surrounded by vacuum-chambers, that now no
faintest sound of the Falls was audible. All that betrayed the nearness
of the cataract was a faint, incessant trembling of the metal walls, as
though the solid ribs of Earth herself were shuddering with the impact
of the plunge.

Old Flint surveyed this extraordinary chamber with mingled feelings. It
surely offered absolute protection, for the present--or seemed to--but
his distressed mind conjured alarming pictures of the future, in case no
rescue came. Death by starvation, thirst and madness loomed before him.
Nervously he recommenced his pacing. Another terribly serious factor was
to be considered. He had now been three hours without his dose of
morphia, and his nerves were calling, tugging insistently for it.

"Rotten luck," he grumbled, "that I've got none with me!" Even there, in
the imminent presence of disaster and death, his mind reverted to the
poison, more necessary to him than food.

Waldron now had grown fairly calm. He stood leaning against the steel
ladder, down which they had descended. Choosing a cigar, he proceeded to
light up.

"Might as well be comfortable while we wait," said he. "I only wish we
had a couple of chairs, down here. Oversight on our part that we didn't
have some steel ones put in, and a line of canned goods and a few quarts
of Scotch. The floor's a bit damp and cold to sit on, and I want a drink
damn bad!"

Flint swung about and faced him, pale and shaking, tortured with fear
and with longing for his dope.

"You--you don't think it _will_ be long, eh, do you?" he demanded. "Not
long before we're taken out?"

Waldron shrugged his shoulders and blew a long, thin arrow of smoke
athwart the brightly-lighted air.

"Search me!" he exclaimed. "To judge by what was happening when we made
our exit, the Plant must be a mess, by this time. We seem to have been
checked, even if not mated, Flint. I must admit they caught us by
surprise. Caught us napping, damn them, after all! They were stronger
than we thought, Flint, and cleverer, and better organized. And so--"

"Don't say 'we,' curse you!" snarled Flint. "Blame yourself, if you want
to, but leave me out! _I_ knew there was trouble due, I tell you. _I_
saw it coming! Who's been trying to crush the swine completely, if not
I? Who's worked night and day to have those bills put through, and who
had the army increased, and conscription started? Who's driven the
President to back all sorts of things? Who's forced them? Who made the
National Mounted Police a reality, if not I? Damn you, don't include
_me_ in your blame!"

Waldron shrugged his shoulders, and smoked contemplatively.

"Suit yourself," he answered. "If we both die, down here, it won't
matter much either way."

"Die?" quavered the old jackal, suddenly forgetting his rage and peering
about with furtive eyes. "Did you say die, Wally? No, no! You didn't say
that! You didn't mean that, surely!"

Waldron smiled, evilly, joying in this abject fear of his hated partner.

"Oh, yes, I did, though," he retorted. "It's quite possible, you know.
In case our government--yours, if you prefer--can't get troops through,
here, or a big general revolution sweeps things, inside a day or two,
we're done. We'll starve and stifle, here, sure as shooting!"

"No, no, no! Not that, not _that_!" whimpered Flint, shuddering. "I
can't die, yet. I--I'm not ready for it! There's all that missionary
work of mine not yet done, and my huge international Sunday School
League to perfect; and there's the tremendous ten-million-dollar
Cathedral of Saint Luke the Pious that I'm having built on Riverside
Drive, and there's--"

"Cut it!" gibed Waldron, spitting with very disgust. "If your time's
come, Flint, you'll die, cathedrals or no cathedrals. Your Sunday
schools won't save you any more than my investments will--which have
largely been wine, women and song. As a matter of fact, if it comes to
starvation, if we aren't rescued and taken out from under the red-hot
wreckage that's on top of us, I'll outlive _you_! I can exist on my
surplus adipose tissue, for a while; but you--_you're_ nothing but skin
and bone. You'll starve far quicker than I will, old man."

"Don't! Don't!" implored the shaking wretch, covering his eyes with both
trembling hands.

"Moral, you oughtn't to have been a dope-fiend, all these years,"
continued Waldron, cuttingly, determined that now, once for all, his
despised partner should hear the truth. "How you've lived so long, as it
is, I don't understand. When I tried to marry Kate, and failed, I
reckoned you'd pass over in almost no time--and, by the way, that's why
I was so insistent. But you've disappointed me, Flint. Disappointed me
sorely. You still live. It won't be long, however. Down here, you know,
you simply can't get any dope. In a little while you'll begin to suffer
the torments of Hell. You'll die of starvation and drug 'yen,' Flint,
and you'll die mad, mad, _mad_! Understand me! Mad, for morphine! And I,
I shall watch you, and exult!"

Flint cringed, shuddering and stopped his ears. His partner, gloating
over him, smoked faster now. A strange light shone in his eyes. His
pulse beat faster than usual, and a certain extravagance of thought and
speech had become manifest in him.

He tried to compose himself, feeling that he must not push the cowardly
Flint too far, but his ideas refused to flow in orderly sequence.
Wonderingly he stared at his cigar, the tip of which was now glowing
more brightly than before.

And then, suddenly sniffing the air he understood. His eyes widened with
horror absolute. He started forward, gasped and cried:

"_Flint! Flint! The oxygen is coming in!_"

Uncomprehending, the old man still stood there, mumbling to himself. His
face was now tinged with unusual color, and his heart, too, was thumping
strangely.

"_Oxygen_!" shouted Waldron, shaking him by the shoulder. "It--it's
leaking in, here, somewhere! If we can't stop it--_we're dead men_!"

"Eh? _What_?" stammered the Billionaire, staring at him with eyes of
half-intoxicated fear. "What d'you mean, the oxygen? In--in here?"

"_In here_!" cried "Tiger," casting a wild and terrible gaze about him
at the vast, empty trap of steel. "Can't you smell it? That ozone
smell? My God, we're lost! We're lost!"

"You're crazy!" retorted Flint, with vigor. "Nothing of the sort could
happen!" His head was held high, now, and new life seemed surging
through that spent and drug-wrecked body. "There's no way those curs
could have turned on any gas, here. You're crazy, ha! ha! ha! Insane,
eh? A good joke--capital joke, that! I must tell it at the Union League
Club! 'Tiger' Waldron, suddenly insane, and--ha! ha! ha!"

He burst into a long, shrill cacchination. Already his face was scarlet
and his mind a whirl. Though neither man understood the reason, yet the
fact remained that one of the last great explosions had ruptured a
subterranean check-valve closing the six-inch pipe that was to feed the
storage-tanks; and now a swift, huge stream of pure oxygen gas was
rushing at tremendous velocity into the vast chamber of steel.

Waldron, his heart leaping as though it would burst his ribs, raised a
fist to strike down his insulter; then, with drunken indecision, joined
in the maniacal laughter of the staggering old man.

In their ears a strange, wild humming now became audible. Lights danced
before their eyes; their senses reeled, and violent, extravagant ideas
surged through their drunken brains.

"_Ha! Ha! Ha!_" rang Waldron's crazy laughter, echoing the old man's.
All at once, his cigar broke into flame. Cursing, he hurled it away,
staggering back against the ladder and stood there swaying, clutching it
to hold himself from falling.

There he stood, and stared at Flint, with eyes that started from his
head, with panting breath and crimson face.

The old man, in a sudden revulsion of terror, was now grovelling along
the floor, by one of the massive walls, clawing at the steel with
impotent hands and screaming mingled prayers and oaths. His ravings,
horrible to hear, echoed through the great tank, now swiftly filling