a million leagues removed from that unhappy man of another nationality,
who had chosen to thrust an inexpert finger into the workings of an
alien life. The machinery was dragging him up and down the sunlit
platform. The two men seemed to be learning polka-mazurkas together, and
the burden of their song, borne by one deep voice, was: "What did you
give me the drink for?"

I saw the flash of silver in the doctor's hand. The navvy took it and
pocketed it with his left; but never for an instant did his strong right
leave the doctor's coat-collar, and as the crisis approached, louder and
louder rose his bull-like roar: "What did you give me the drink for?"

They drifted under the great twelve-inch pinned timbers of the
foot-bridge towards the bench, and, I gathered, the time was very near
at hand. The stuff was getting in its work. Blue, white, and blue again,
rolled over the navvy's face in waves, till all settled to one rich
clay-bank yellow and--that fell which fell.

I thought of the blowing up of Hell Gate; of the geysers in the
Yellowstone Park; of Jonah and his whale: but the lively original, as
I watched it foreshortened from above, exceeded all these things. He
staggered to the bench, the heavy wooden seat cramped with iron cramps
into the enduring stone, and clung there with his left hand. It quivered
and shook, as a breakwater-pile quivers to the rush of landward-racing
seas; nor was there lacking when he caught his breath, the "scream of
a maddened beach dragged down by the tide." His right hand was upon
the doctor's collar, so that the two shook to one paroxysm, pendulums
vibrating together, while I, apart, shook with them.

It was colossal-immense; but of certain manifestations the English
language stops short. French only, the caryatid French of Victor Hugo,
would have described it; so I mourned while I laughed, hastily shuffling
and discarding inadequate adjectives. The vehemence of the shock spent
itself, and the sufferer half fell, half knelt, across the bench. He was
calling now upon God and his wife, huskily, as the wounded bull calls
upon the unscathed herd to stay. Curiously enough, he used no bad
language: that had gone from him with the rest. The doctor exhibited
gold. It was taken and retained. So, too, was the grip on the
coat-collar.

"If I could stand," boomed the giant, despairingly, "I'd smash you--you
an' your drinks. I'm dyin'--dyin'--dyin'!"

"That's what you think," said the doctor. "Y