“Here, on this spot.”
“Hush! not so loud. Didn't I hear a step?”
They both listened keenly. The fog was thick by this time.
Cole whispered, “Look down the river. I wonder which will go off first? It is very cold; very.” And he shook like a man in an ague.
Both men listened, numbed with cold, and quivering with the expectation of crime.
A clock struck twelve.
At the first stroke the confederates started and uttered a cry. They were in that state when everything sudden shakes men like thunder.
All still again, and they listened and shook again with fog and grime.
Sudden a lurid flash, and a report, dull and heavy, and something tall seemed to lean toward them from the sky, and there was a mighty rushing sound, and a cold wind in their faces, and an awful fall of masonry on the water, and the water spurted under the stroke. The great chimney had fallen in the river. At this very moment came a sharp, tremendous report like a clap of thunder close at hand. It was so awful, that both bag and pistol fell out of Coventry's hand and rung upon the pavement, and he fled, terror-stricken.
Cole, though frightened, went down on his knees, and got the bag, and started to run the other way.