More terrible than the first explosion was, or seemed, this second one. It mowed down half a hundred shrieking souls. And it was curious to note the lateral action of the blast when it hit a resisting surface. Dynamite explodes with a downward or upward force, lyddite and nitro-glycerine and what not other devil's own powers act more or less in the same set manner. But the furious ingredients of these bombs hurled on Walthamstow contained stuff that released a discharge which swept all things from it horizontally, in a quarter-mile, lightning sweep, like a scythe of flame. A solid block of shabby villas was laid out as flat as your palm by the explosion of this second bomb. Scarcely a brick was left standing upright. What houses escaped demolition around the edge of the convulsion had their doors and windows splintered into rubbish. The concussion of this chemical frenzy was felt, like an earthquake, in a ten-mile circle. Wherever the scorching breath of the bombs breathed on stone or metal it left a sulphurous, yellow-white veneer, acrid in odor and smooth to the touch. Whole street-lengths of twisted iron railings were coated with this murderous white-wash. [Sidenote: More bombs as the Zeppelin rises.] [Sidenote: Freaks of the explosion.] Having made sure of its mark, the ravaging Zeppelin rose higher on the discharge of its first bomb and still higher after firing the second. At the safe distance of four thousand feet it dropped three more shells recklessly, haphazard. One of these bored cleanly through a slate-tiled roof, through furniture and two floorings and burrowed ten feet into the ground without exploding. This intact shell has since been carefully analyzed by the experts of the Board of Explosions at the British War Office. Another bomb detonated on the steel rails of the Walthamstow tram-line and sent them curling skyward from their rivetted foundations like serpentine wisps of paper. Great cobblestones were heaved through shop windows and partitions and out into the flower-beds of rear gardens; some of the cobbles were flung through solid attic blinds and others were catapulted through brick walls a foot in thickness. A hole as big as a moving-van burned into the road at one place. In a side street an impromptu fountain squirted playfully into the dust-burdened air, the result of a central water-pipe punctured by a slug from one of the bomb's iron entrails. But these things were not noted until dawn and comparative peace had returned to Walthamstow and men could count with some degree the cost of the reckless invasion. [Sidenote: British aeroplanes pursue.]