THE SINGULAR GOOD FORTUNE OF A GENTLE ENGLISHMAN
It so happened that during a tour of inspection seven of us were together, going over the works. On entering the guncotton dry-house, I noticed a strong odor of nitric acid.
“Out of here, quick!” I cried. “The place is going to blow up!”
There were perhaps a hundred pounds of dry guncotton in the room at the time, spread out in pans. As was afterward learned, the foreman, being in a hurry for the guncotton, had turned live steam into the pipes instead of circulating hot water through them as instructed.
We were barely out of the room when the guncotton burned with a flash, wrecking the building and setting fire to the fragments. I was just congratulating myself that no one had been injured by the explosion, when it was discovered that one of the party, an Englishman, the even tenor of whose way nothing could accelerate or disturb, and who feared nothing, had not quite made up his mind in time to get out of the room before the flash came. On seeing him emerge at last from the zone of destruction, I was horror-struck, for apparently every hair had been burned from his head and face, while shreds of skin hung from his hands and cheeks and brow.
Nevertheless, the Englishman’s usual phlegmatic manner was wholly unruffled, and he spoke in his conventional voice, untinged with emotion:
“Mr. Maxim, it isn’t often that one has an opportunity under such circumstances of witnessing exactly what occurs.”