She was still speaking, when a lay sister rushed out of the door they were about to enter, with a broom in her hand, which she had evidently forgotten to put down.
'The powder magazine at Monteverde!' she cried excitedly. 'I saw it from the window! It was like fireworks! It has blown up with everybody in it, I am sure!'
CHAPTER XVII
The lay sister was right. The great powder magazine at Monteverde had been blown up, but by what hands no one has ever surely known. The destruction was sudden, complete, tremendous, for a large quantity of dynamite had been stored in the deep vaults. Today, a great hollow in the side of the hill and near the road marks the spot where the buildings stood. Many stories have been told of the catastrophe; many tales have been repeated about suspicious characters who had been seen in the neighbourhood before the fatal event, and for some of these there is fairly good authority.
All those who were in the city when the explosion took place, and I myself was in Rome at the time, will remember how every one was at first convinced that his own house had been struck by lightning or suddenly shaken to its foundations. Every one will remember, too, the long and ringing shower of broken glass that followed instantly upon the terrific report. Every window looking westward was broken at once, except some few on the lower stories of houses protected by buildings opposite.
Giovanni Severi was in the main building over the vaults a short time before the catastrophe, having just finished a special inspection which had occupied most of the afternoon. He was moving to leave the place when an unfamiliar sound caught his ears, a noise muffled yet sharp, like that of the discharge of musketry heard through a thick wall. The junior officers and the corporal who were with him heard it, too, but did not understand its meaning. Giovanni, however, instantly remembered the story told by one of the survivors from a terrible explosion of ammunition near Naples many years previously. That muffled sound of quick firing came from metallic cartridges exploding within the cases that held them; each case would burst and set fire to others beside it; like the spark that runs along a fuse, the train of boxes would blow up in quick succession till the large stores of gunpowder were fired and then a mass of dynamite beyond. There were divisions in the vaults, there were doors, there were walls, but Giovanni well knew that no such barriers would avail for more than a few minutes.
Without raising his voice, he led his companions to the open door, speaking as he went.
'The magazine will blow up in two or three minutes at the outside,' he said. 'Send the men running in all directions, and go yourselves, to warn the people in the cottages near by to get out of doors at once. It will be like an earthquake; every house within five hundred yards will be shaken down. Now run! Run for your lives and to save the lives of others! Call out the men as you pass the gates.'