Cursing, he hurled it away, staggering back against the ladder and stood there swaying, clutching it to hold himself from falling.
There he stood, and stared at Flint, with eyes that started from his head, with panting breath and crimson face.
The old man, in a sudden revulsion of terror, was now grovelling along the floor, by one of the massive walls, clawing at the steel with impotent hands and screaming mingled prayers and oaths.

His ravings, horrible to hear, echoed through the great tank, now swiftly filling with gas.
"Help! Help!" he screamed.

"Save me--my God--save me--.

Let me out, let me out! A million, if you let me out! A billion--_the whole world_! The world, ha! ha! ha! Damn it to Hell--the world, I say! I'll give the world to be let out! It's mine--I own it--_all, all mine!_ Ha! Dogs! You would rise up against your master and your God, would you?
But it's no use--we'll beat you yet--out! _out_!--the world--I own it! All this plant--this gas, all mine! My oxygen--ah! it chokes me! _Help! Help!_--Swine! I'll scourge you yet--_absolute power_--_the world_--!" With one final spark of energy, panting, his heart flailing itself to death under the pitiless urge of the oxygen, old Flint sprang up, ran wildly, blindly straight across the steel floor, and, screaming blasphemies like a soul in Hell, dashed into the opposite wall.
He recoiled, staggered, spun round and fell sprawling most horribly--stone dead.
Waldron, at sight of this awful end, felt an uncontrollable terror sweep over his drunk and maddened senses.

Though all his blood was leaping in his arteries, and his breath coming so fast it choked him, yet a moment's seeming sanity possessed his reeling brain.
"The door! The door, up there!" he screamed, with a wild, terrible curse.
Then, turning toward the ladder, in spite of his fat and flabby muscles quivering in terrible spasms, he ran up the long steel structure with a supreme and ape-like agility.
Fifty feet he made, seventy-five, ninety-- But, all at once, something seemed to break in his overtaxed heart.
A blackness swam before his dazzled eyes.