He carefully extinguished the match, and then, after a moment’s thought, drew a newspaper from his pocket, and, unfolding it, twisted it into a long fuse. Then, lighting another match, he dabbled one end of the paper in a puddle of oil and pressed it down with his foot until it was sticking to the floor of the car. So intent was he on this that he failed to note that the match had burnt down to his fingers, and as the flame touched him, he involuntarily dropped it.
Instantly there was a flash and a roar and the whole car seemed to burst into flame. Shielding his face with one arm, Bassett sprang to the door and tried to push it back, but he jammed it in his haste and could not move it. He saw his trousers afire and stopped to beat out the flame; his trousers caught again—his coat—his hat—his hair—
Then he understood, and with a shrill scream of terror turned again to the door, clawing at it, scratching at it, tearing at it like a wild beast. Another moment, and the flames were swirling about him—another moment and he could feel his flesh crisping under their white-hot touch; another moment—and the door rolled back and he fell forward out of the car, afire from head to foot.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE BOMB
The watchman in the upper yards, passing wearily on his rounds at eleven o’clock of that windy February night, and deeply thankful that his trick would end in half an hour, stopped suddenly, ears a-strain, fancying that he had heard, above the shrieking of the wind, the shrieking of a human voice coming from the string of cars which stretched down into the lower yards. Then, deciding that it was only the wind, after all, he started on his way again, only to be startled by another scream there was no mistaking—a scream shrill, agonized, telling of the last extremity of suffering and terror.
Drawing his revolver, he started toward the cars as fast as his legs would carry him. As he drew nearer, the screams increased in shrillness and agony, and it required no little will-power on the part of the watchman to keep his legs moving in the right direction. The thought flashed through his brain that a man was being slowly torn to pieces by some ferocious wild beast, but just as he turned the end of the row of cars, he saw a sudden burst of flame from one of them, and a blazing figure pitched out headlong to the ground—a figure which, with a sudden sense of sickness, the watchman recognized as a human being.
Blowing a shrill blast on his whistle, and pulling off his overcoat as he ran, he hastened forward. In a moment he was beside the moaning, struggling, blackened figure, and threw his overcoat over it, his heart faint within him, smothering the flames and beating at them with his gloves. Another watchman, summoned by the whistle, ran up at that moment.
“What’s the trouble?”
“Man burned t’ death,” panted the other.