“I am apt to think,” said I as we emerged upon the cliff, “that ’twas no earthquake; the lightning struck the place.”
“Nay, you are in the wrong,” replied Ambrose. “The earth shook. ’Twas certainly an earthquake.”
“It was neither one nor the other,” came the voice of Doctor Copicus, who stepped suddenly into our path.
“I say that it was neither one nor the other,” said he again; but there was no anger in his voice—nay, he smiled on us, as he added:
“Hearken, my children! Come, walk with me and hearken, for there’s somewhat I’d have you to know.”
So, wondering greatly, we began to walk with him alongst the cliff.
For a while, we went without speech. Then the Doctor spoke again; but his voice was strange and remote, as if he spoke to himself.
“Much injustice,” said he, “much contumely, much wrong, I suffered at their hands. I, a scholar such as cometh not in many generations, a thinker compared with whom their subtlest heads were as wooden blocks; I whose insight was piercing to the soul! They despised me! rejected me! cast me out!
“To destroy the nation, to destroy it root and branch, to rase the populous cities, to blast the countrysides; to find out a combustible, an explosive searching as lightning, mighty that blasting gunpowder would be, compared to it, but a puny breath—such motives, such intents, became henceforth the poles and axle of my transported mind.
“This night, my children” (turning to us) “was that mighty thing discovered, and the combustion of but a grain of it wrought the convulsion that shook this island.... A cock-boat’s burden would shake me a greater island!