The drive master was hurling the dynamite sticks far in advance of himself and to right and to left, making his own location a puzzling matter. The men had seen him bomb incipient jams in that fashion, lighting short fuses and heaving the explosive to a safe distance. The blasts were nearer and still nearer, and more frequent; the ground quaked under their feet; in the intervening silences they heard the whine and the rustle of upthrown litter in the air, the patterings and plops of debris raining into the spaces of the deadwater. Behind the attack was the menace of the bodefully unseen--the lawlessness of the fantastically unprecedented. "I don't blame the fellers with the guns, if they have quit," commented Vittum. "They might as well try to lick the lightning in a thundercloud." CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Mern's mercenaries were not cowards. They had served valiantly as guards of strike breakers, had fought in many forays, had winged their attackers, and had been winged in return. At mill gates they had resisted mobs and had endured missiles; they had ridden on trucks, protecting goods and drivers, through lanes of howling, hostile humanity; they had thrown the cordon of their bodies around dock workers. But the gunmen's exploits in intrepidity had been, of and in the cities. The environment at Skulltree was the Great Open. They were not backed by solidity or barricaded behind walls. There was not the reassurance of good, honest earth under their feet; they were precariously perched in space, so it seemed--standing on the stringers of the dam, peering into a void of shrouding mists and thunderous waters, the wilderness all about them! In their battles in past times they had been able to see the foe; now they were called on to fight a noise--the bodeful detonations of blasts, to right, to left--here and there. There was a foe; he was on his way. They did not know what sort of ruin he purposed to wreak as the climax of his performance. Craig himself did not know, so he affirmed in reply to anxious queries, and the boss's uncertainty and increasing consternation added to the peculiar psychological menace of the thing. "Give us orders, Mr. Craig!" pleaded the captain of the guards. "Show us something to fight against. How many of 'em are there? Where are they? "It's that damnable Latisan, working single-handed. I'm sure of it. Go get him!" "If you don't get him, he's going to blow up this dam," stated the frightened lawyer. A far-flung bomb of dynamite landed in the water and shot a geyser spraying against the fog pall. "I'm taking that guess for gospel," affirmed the chief gunman, wiping spray from his face. "Mr. Craig, you can't expect us to hang on here, facing a thing like what's coming!" "Shoot him!" gasped the Comas director, but he was revolving on unsteady feet and the aimlessness of his gaze revealed that he had no definite idea of procedure; his incertitude wrecked all the courage of his supporters.