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on the rail. The gesticulating figure was bright and white in the
moonlight, and shouting, "Fizzle, you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of
women! You hot-blooded hound! Boil! boil! boil!"
Suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, and
flung it deliberately, lump after lump, at Raut.
"
Horrocks!" cried Raut. "Horrocks!"
He clung crying to the chain, pulling himself up from the
burning of the cone. Each missile Horrocks flung hit him. His
clothes charred and glowed, and as he struggled the cone dropped,
and a rush of hot suffocating gas whooped out and burned round him
in a swift breath of flame.
His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary red
had passed, Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head
streaked with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain,
and writhing in agony--a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous
creature that began a sobbing intermittent shriek.
Abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster's anger passed. A
deadly sickness came upon him. The heavy odour of burning flesh
came drifting up to his nostrils. His sanity returned to him.
"God have mercy upon me!" he cried. "O God! what have I
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