d
the faculties wildly striving to grasp again at order. And Sarrasin
began to recover his reason and his senses, and, brave as he was, his
nerves relaxed when he saw in the instreaming light of the morning--the
electric light had been driven out--that he was still gripping on to the
body of the Sicilian, and that half the wretched Sicilian's head had
been blown away. Then everything was once more extinguished for him.

But in that one moment of reviving consciousness he contrived to keep
his wits well about him. 'It was not the Sicilian who did _that_,' he
said to himself doggedly.

CHAPTER XXV

SOME VICTIMS

The crash came on the ears of the Dictator and Hamilton. For a moment or
two the senses of both were paralysed. It is not easy for most of us,
who have not been through the cruel suffocation of a dynamite explosion,
to realise completely how the crushed collapse of the nervous system
leaves mind, thought, and feeling absolutely prostrate before the mere
shrillness of sound. We are not speaking now of the cases in which
serious harm is done--of course anyone can understand _that_--but only
of the cases, after all, and in even the best carried out and most
brutally contrived dynamite attempt--the vast majority of cases in which
the intended, or at least the probable, victims suffer no permanent harm
whatever. The Dictator suddenly found his senses deserting him with the
crash of the explosion. He knew in a moment what it was, and he knew
also that for a certain moment or two his senses would utterly fail to
take account of it. For one fearful second he knew he was going to be
insensible, just as a passenger at sea knows he is going to be sick.
Then it was all over with him and quiet, and he felt nothing.

How much time had passed when he was roused by the voice of Hamilton he
did not know. Hamilton had had much the same experience, but Hamilton's
main work in life was looking after the Dictator, and the Dictator's
main work in life was not in looking after himself. Hamilton, too, was
the younger man. Anyhow, he rallied the sooner.

'Are you hurt?' he cried. And he trembled lest he should hear the
immortal words of Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, 'I'm killed!'

'Eh--what? I say, is it you, Hamilton? I'm all right, boy; how about
you?'

'Nothing the matter with _me_,' Hamilton said. 'Quite sure you are not
hurt?'

'Not the least little bit--only dazzled and dazed a good deal,
Hamilton.'

'Let's se