Useless! The air had made the flame attached to the conductor more active; the match, which at rest might have burnt five minutes, was consumed in thirty seconds, and the infernal work exploded.
Furious vortices of sulphur and nitre, devouring shoals of fire which caught every object, the terrible thunder of the explosion, this is what the second which followed disclosed in that cavern of horrors.

The rocks split like planks of deal beneath the axe.

A jet of fire, smoke, and _debris_ sprang from the middle of the grotto, enlarging as it mounted.
The large walls of silex tottered and fell upon the sand, and the sand itself, an instrument of pain when launched from its hard bed, riddled the faces with its myriad cutting atoms.

Shrieks, imprecations, human life, dead bodies--all were engulfed in one terrific crash.
The three first compartments became one sepulchral sink into which fell grimly back, in the order of their weight, every vegetable, mineral, or human fragment.

Then the lighter sand and ash came down in turn, stretching like a winding sheet and smoking over the dismal scene.