Ivan answered with another look of calm superiority. "Fear nothing; I have my foot upon the head of the giant."
The underground battle had lasted three hours. The people were beside themselves with fright; they turned upon Ivan and cursed him.
"Do you think you are a God," they cried, "and can create an earthquake?"
Ivan paid no attention either to their fears or their curses; he gave another signal to the men at the machine—
"With the whole power!"
The machine, the outcome of the wonderful inventive genius of man, stormed the very gates of hell itself. The underground tremblings followed one another rapidly, growing stronger and stronger; the deep groaning rose to a stentorian, deafening roar.
"It is all over!" shrieked the people in the valley, and fell upon their knees.
In the air a shrill, whistling sound was now heard, as if an engine had suddenly let off steam, and out of the shaft of the company's mine there arose rapidly a white column of steam, which, as soon as it encountered the cold regions of space, shot up into the sky, where it formed itself into a white cloud, which cloud suddenly broke into a deluge of rain. At once the underground convulsion ceased, and the shrill whistling died away in the distance.
Ivan, looking round, said, quickly, "Paul, collect the rain-water; I must know what it is made of." Upon this he gave the machinist the signal to stop the machine. There was not even a drop of perspiration upon his forehead. He took the bottle of rain-water that Paul brought him and put it in his pocket. "Now, gentlemen," he said, "you can go to supper. The work is accomplished."
"Is the fire extinguished?" asked Spitzhase.