The next ten days saw the institution of a merciless system in the works and mines of the Area. During the period of the revivalist’s activity there had been an accelerated fall in the output; and Nordenholt determined that this must be made good as soon as possible. Possibly also he believed that a spell of intense physical exertion would exhaust the workers and leave them no time to indulge in recollections and reflections which might be dangerous. Whatever his motives may have been, his methods were drastic in the extreme. The minimum necessary output was trebled; and the members of any group who failed to attain it were promptly deported into the desert of the South. Surely entrenched behind the loyalty of the Labour Defence Force, Nordenholt threw aside any concealment and ruled the whole Area as a despot. The end in view was all that he now seemed to see; and he broke men and threw them aside without the slightest hesitation. More than ever, it seemed to me at this time, he was like a machine, rolling forward along its appointed path, careless of all the human lives and the human interests which he ground to powder under his irresistible wheels. I began to think of him at times in the likeness of Jagannatha, the Lord of the World, under whose car believers cast themselves to death. But none of Nordenholt’s victims were willing ones. Unlimited power, as Nordenholt himself had pointed out to me, is a perilous gift to any man. The human mind is not fitted for strains of this magnitude; and even Nordenholt’s colossal personality suffered, I believe, from the stress of his despotic rule. But where a smaller man would have frittered away his energies in petty oppression or aimless regulation, Nordenholt never lost sight of his main objective: and I believe that his harshness in the end arose merely from his ever-growing determination to bring his enterprise to success. Concentrating his mind entirely upon this, he may have suffered from a loss of perspective which made him ruthless in his demands upon the labouring masses of the Area. If this were so, I cannot find it in me to blame him, in view of the responsibility which he bore. But I have a suspicion that he feared a coming disaster, and that he was determined to take time by the forelock by forcing up production ere the catastrophe overtook us. * * * * *