Then, in one illuminating flash of comprehension, it was all clear to him. With a stare of blank wonder he saw and understood, and fell back appalled at the demoniacal ingenuity of it all.
"I see! I see!" he repeated, vacuously, almost.
Then, to make sure of what he had been told, he crossed the room and picked up the bar of steel that had fallen at his feet as he first entered the door. This bar he let fall so that one end would rest on the metal vault-covering and the other on the rail of copper.
There was a report, a sudden leap of flame, and the continued hissing fury of the short-circuited current, until the bar, heated to incandescence, twisted and writhed where it lay like a thing of life. He drew a deep breath, and watched it.
That was the danger he had so closely skirted? That was the fate which he had escaped!
He stood gazing at the insidious yet implacable agent of death, spluttering its tongue of flame at him like an angry snake; and, as he looked, his face was beaded with sweat, and seemed ashen in color.
Then a sense of the dangers still surrounding them returned to his mind. He shook himself together, and, making a circuit of the room, found the switch and turned off the current. As he did so he gave a little muffled cry of gratitude, for across the rear corner of the room ran two leaden water-pipes. Into one of these he cut and drilled with his pocket-knife, ruthlessly, without a moment's hesitation. He was suddenly rewarded by a thin jet of water spraying him in the face. He caught his hat full of it, and carried it to Frank, who drank from it, feverishly and deeply. It not only brought her strength back to her; but, after it, she could speak a little, though huskily, and with considerable pain.
"Can you walk?"
She signalled, yes.
"We've got to get out of here, at once!"