What struck me most about him was his fearlessness. Once he gave me, incidentally in the course of a talk upon something else, a suggestion of the risks which his work entailed. It seemed to me that I would have faced half a dozen other kinds of death rather than that one. Purely as a matter of physiological interest, he told me that the effect of radioactive materials on a large scale upon the human body would exceed the worst inventions of mediæval torturers. “The radiations, you know,” he said, drawing at his cigarette. “The radiations have a knack of destroying tissue; but they don’t produce immediate effects. The skin remains quite healthy, to all appearances, for days after the damage is done. Then you get festering sores appearing on the affected parts. “Well, on a large scale, the affected parts will be the whole surface of the body; so that in itself will be pretty bad, as you can see. Poor old Job will have to take a back seat after this. “Then, again, I expect enormous quantities of radioactive gas will be evolved; and probably one will breathe some of it into one’s lungs. The result of that will be rather worse than the external injuries, of course. I doubt if a man will last half an hour under that treatment; but that half-hour will be the limit in pain.” “Can’t you use a mask or some lead protection?” I asked. “Or could you not fix up the whole thing in a bomb-proof case which would keep the rays from things outside?” “Well, that’s the first thing one thinks of, naturally; but to tell the truth it’s impracticable for various reasons. Some of them are implicit in the nature of the processes I’m using; but even apart from that, look at the state of affairs when the thing does go off with a bang. It will be one of the biggest explosions, considering the amounts I have to use; and if I’m going to be flung about like a child’s toy, I prefer to fly light and not have a sheet of lead mail to go along with me and crush me when I strike anything. As to a mask, nothing would stick on. You would simply be asking to have your face driven in, if you wore anything of the kind. “No, I’ve been lucky so far. I’ve only lost three fingers in a minor burst-up. And I’m going to stake on my luck rather than risk certain damage. But if I can only pull it off, Flint.... Nordenholt thinks a lot of it; and I don’t want to disappoint him if I can help it. If I do go to glory, I’ll at least leave something behind me which will make it more than worth while.” Nordenholt, I learned later, _did_ “think a lot of it.” I spoke to him on the subject one day; and I was astonished to find how much stress he laid on the Henley-Davenport work.