The report roared heavily in that constricted space. For a moment the obeah stopped short. A look of brute pain, of wonder, then of quintupled rage passed over his face. A twitching grin of passion distorted the huge, wounded gash of the mouth. He screamed. Up came the stone ax. "Again!" shouted Stern. "Give it to him again!" She fired on the instant. But already, with a chattering howl, the obeah was running forward. And after him, screaming, snarling, foaming till their lips were all a slaver, the pack swept toward them. Stern dragged the girl away, back to the landing. "Up! _Up!_" he yelled. Then, turning, he hurled the second bomb. A blinding glare dazzled him. A shock, as of a suddenly unleashed volcano, all but flung him headlong. Dazed, choked by the gush of fumes that burst in a billowing cloud out along the hall and up the stairs, he staggered forward. Tightly to his body he clutched the remaining vials. Where was Beatrice? He knew not. Everything boomed and echoed in his stunned ears. Below there, he heard thunderous crashes as wrecked walls and floors went reeling down. And ever, all about him, eddied the strangling smoke. Then, how long after he knew not, he found himself gasping for air beside a window. "Beatrice!" he shouted with his first breath. Everything seemed strangely still. 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. "Or the whole tower will fall--and bury us! No more!" Stern laughed. Beatrice was unharmed; he had found her. "I'll sow it broadcast outside," he answered, in a kind of exaltation, almost a madness from the strain and horror of that night, the weakness of his fever and his loss of blood. "Maybe the others, down there still, may need it. Here goes!" And, one by one, all seven of the bombs he hurled far out and away, to right, to left, straight ahead, slinging them in vast parabolas from the height. And as they struck one by one, night blazed like noonday; and even to the Palisades the crashing echoes roared. The forest, swept as by a giant broom, became a jackstraw tangle of destruction. Thus it perished. When the last vial of wrath had been out-poured, when silence had once more dropped its soothing mantle and the great brooding dark had come again, "girdled with gracious watchings of the stars," Stern spoke. "Gods!" he exclaimed exultantly. "Gods we are now to them--to such of them as may still live. Gods we are--gods we shall be forever! "Whatever happens now, _they_ know us. The Great White Gods of Terror! They'll flee before our very look! Unarmed, if we meet a thousand, we'll be safe. _Gods!_" Another silence. Then suddenly he knew that Beatrice was weeping.