Desperately his wings beat upward. A wide-tongued flash of fire bit into the night, there was a crash as if the earth burst apart.
Still half asleep, he sat up in bed. The roar rang in his ears. The house shook; fragments of window pane tinkled on the floor.
Out of bed he jumped, avoiding the broken glass, still uncertain what was dream, what reality.
Somewhere outside he heard a negro's frightened scream, and the sound of running steps.
He pulled on a shirt and a pair of working trousers, and knotted his shoe-strings. As he ran down the hall, Hollis, his tones shaking, was speaking to the doctor on the wire.
On reaching the back porch, a peculiar smell struck his nostrils—just a suggestion of a heavy odor that he knew at once. The dead fumes of dynamite—could they be blasting that close to the house? An overcharge, perhaps?
Over the sink his mother bent, washing the blood from the arm of the cook, Diana. "What's the matter, mother?"
She turned an alarmed face to his. "The glass cut her arm—nothing serious. Hollis is phoning the doctor." As he came closer, she whispered, "Artery."
"Can I help?"
She looked white and worried. "You'd better go to the mine, Pelham. It's an explosion, I think."