self-possession quite as great as theirs, his face impassive and his
frame immovable.

He noted with amazement the great force of the infernal power the
burning fuses loosed, and knew, instinctively, that the explosive was a
stronger one than that with which he had been thoroughly familiar since
his earliest childhood--gunpowder. He wondered mightily what it could
be, and, finally, summoned courage to inquire of one of the swart
laborers.

These were the first words he had spoken that day, and, although the man
was courteous enough in answering, "Dynamite," he thought he saw a smile
upon his face of veiled derision, and resented it so fiercely that
instead of thanking him he gave him a black look and sauntered off. But
he had learned what the explosive was; before he went away he had seen
it used in half-a-dozen ways and had a visual demonstration of the
necessity for caution in its handling. One of the young and cocky
engineers, whom he so hated, dropped by dread mischance a heavy hammer
on a stick of it, and the resulting turmoil left him lying torn and
mangled on the rocks.

Lorey felt small sympathy for the man's suffering, although he never had
seen any human being mutilated thus before. Many a man he had seen lying
with a clean hole through his forehead, the neat work of a definitely
aimed bullet; assassination and the spectacles it carried with it could
not worry him: his childhood and young manhood had been passed where
"killings" were too frequent; the man, like all the others there at
work, was his enemy, and he sorrowed for him not at all; but this
tearing, mangling laceration of human flesh and bone was horrifying to
him.