Waldron laughed brutally.
"Bravo!" cried he, with flushed and mottled face.

"You'll do, Flint! I see, right now, the firing-line is the life for you! Well, let the row come, and devil take it, say I.Better anything than--" The sentence was never finished, For suddenly a shattering explosion hurled a vast section of the western encircling wall outward, out into the River, and, where but a moment before, the partners had been gazing at a high concrete-and-steel barrier, with electric lights on top, now only a huge gap appeared, through which the foam-tossed current could be seen leaping swiftly onward toward the Falls.
Hurled back from the window by the force of the explosion, both men were struck dumb with terror and amaze.

Flint rallied first, and with a cry of rage, inarticulate as a beast's howl, sprang to the window again.
Outside, a scene of desolation and wild activity was visible.

The great, paved courtyard, flanked by the turbine houses and the wall, on one hand, and on the other by the oxygen tanks' huge bulk that loomed vaguely through the electric-lighted mist, now had begun to swarm with men.
Flint saw a few forms lying prone under the hard glare of the arcs and vacuum lights.

Others were crawling, writhing, making strange contortions.