he battery, his eyes turned to
the mass of rock looming sullen and black half a mile away, as if
bidding defiance in the face of impending fate. Tremblingly his finger
pressed on the little white knob, and a silence like that of death fell
on those who watched. One minute--two--three--five passed, while in the
bowels of the mountain the fuse was sizzling to its end. Then there came
a puff, something like a cloud of dust rising skyward, but without
sound; and before its upward belching had ceased a tongue of flame
spurted out of its crest--and after that, perhaps two seconds later,
came the explosion. There was a rumbling and a jarring, as if the earth
were convulsed under foot; volumes of dense black smoke shot upward,
shutting the mountain in an impenetrable pall of gloom; and in an
instant these rolling, twisting volumes of black became lurid, and an
explosion like that of a thousand great guns rent the air. As fast as
the eye could follow, sheets of flame shot out of the sea of smoke,
climbing higher and higher, in lightning flashes, until the lurid
tongues licked the air a quarter of a mile above the startled
wilderness. Explosion followed explosion, some of them coming in hollow,
reverberating booms, others sounding as if in mid-air. The heavens were
filled with hurtling rocks; solid masses of granite ten feet square were
thrown a hundred feet away; rocks weighing a ton were hurled still
farther, as if they were no more than stones flung by the hand of a
giant; chunks that would have crashed from the roof to the basement of a
sky-scraper dropped a third and nearly a half a mile away. For three
minutes the frightful convulsions continued. Then the lurid lights died
out of the pall of smoke, and the pall itself began to settle. Howland
felt a grip on his arm. Dumbly he turned and looked into the white,
staring face of the superintendent. His ears tingled, every fiber in him
seemed unstrung. MacDonald's voice came to him strange and weird.

"What do you think of that, Howland?" The two men gripped hands, and
when they looked again they saw dimly through dust and smoke only torn
and shattered masses of rock where had been the giant ridge that barred
the path of the new road to the bay.

Howland talked but little on their way back to camp. The scene that he
had just witnessed affected him strangely; it stirred once more within
him all of his old ambition, all of his old enthusiasm, and yet neither
found voice in words.