And then the night-stillness was broken by the most terrible cry I have ever heard--a cry so terrible and unearthly that it seemed to make the blood in my veins run cold, although I knew that it was from my own lips and no other that the cry had fallen. That cry broke the spell that bound me. Even while it was ringing in my ears I leapt out like a tiger athirst for blood, and, heedless of the hissing fuse, which burnt the faster and brighter for the wind which I made as I rushed by it, I was after him, every drop of blood in my body boiling with fury, every muscle and tendon of my fingers twitching to grip the miscreant’s throat. Had he been as fleet of foot as a greyhound he should not have escaped me then; and though he had thrown the bag away, and was now running for dear life, I was upon him before he was half-way down Noble Street. When he heard my steps he stopped and faced round suddenly, and as he did so I struck him with my clenched fist full under the jaw, and with all my strength. Shall I ever feel such savage joy as thrilled me then as I heard his teeth snap together like the snap of the teeth of an iron rat-trap, and felt the warm rush of his blood upon my hand? He went down like a pole-axed ox, but in the next second had staggered to his knees and thence to his feet. His hand was fumbling at a side-pocket, whence I saw the butt-end of a revolver protruding, but before he could get at it I had him by the throat again, where my blow had knocked the false red beard awry, and I promise you that my grip was none of the gentlest. Nor, for the matter of that, was my language, for--though I am by habit nice of speech and not given to oaths--words, which I have never used before nor since, bubbled up in my throat and would out, though a whole bench of listening bishops were by. “You bloody monster!” I cried, and the words seemed to make iron of the muscles of my arm, and granite of every bone in my fist as I struck him again and again in the face with all my strength. “You hell miscreant and devil. By God in heaven I’ll pound the damned life out of you!” And then the solid ground seemed to stagger and sway beneath me, and from the neighbourhood of the General Post Office came a sudden blaze of light in which I saw a tall chimney crook inward at the middle, as a leg is bent at the knee, and then snap in two like a sugar-stick. There was a low rumble, a roar like the discharge of artillery, followed by the strangest ripping, rending din as of the sudden tearing asunder of innumerable sheets of metal. I was conscious of the falling of masonry, of a choking limy dust, and then a red darkness closed in upon me with a crash, and I remember no more. CHAPTER XXVI AFTER THE EXPLOSION