s less friendly, making me think of a
vast wave towering to heaven and about to break and overwhelm us.
Something formidable had crept into the world about us. For,
undoubtedly, there was a disquieting thought, holding terror as well as
awe, in the picture his words conjured up: the conception of a human
will reaching its deathless hand, spiteful and destructive, down through
the ages, to strike the living and afflict the innocent.

"But what is its object?" burst out the soldier, unable to restrain
himself longer in the silence. "Why does it come from that plantation?
And why should it attack us, or any one in particular?" Questions began
to pour from him in a stream.

"All in good time," the doctor answered quietly, having let him run on
for several minutes. "But I must first discover positively what, or who,
it is that directs this particular fire-elemental. And, to do that, we
must first"--he spoke with slow deliberation--"seek to capture--to
confine by visibility--to limit its sphere in a concrete form."

"Good heavens almighty!" exclaimed the soldier, mixing his words in his
unfeigned surprise.

"Quite so," pursued the other calmly; "for in so doing I think we can
release it from the purpose that binds it, restore it to its normal
condition of latent fire, and also"--he lowered his voice perceptibly
--"also discover the face and form of the Being that ensouls it."

"The man behind the gun!" cried the Colonel, beginning to understand
something, and leaning forward so as not to miss a single syllable.

"I mean that in the last resort, before it returns to the womb of
potential fire, it will probably assume the face and figure of its
Director, of the man of magical knowledge who originally bound it with
his incantations and sent it forth upon its mission of centuries."

The soldier sat down and gasped openly in his face, breathing hard; but
it was a very subdued voice that framed the question.

"And how do you propose to make it visible? How capture and confine it?
What d'ye mean, Dr. John Silence?"

"By furnishing it with the materials for a form. By the process of
materialisation simply. Once limited by dimensions, it will become slow,
heavy, visible. We can then dissipate it. Invisible fire, you see, is
dangerous and incalculable; locked up in a form we can perhaps manage
it. We must betray it--to its death."

"And this material?" we asked in the same breath, although I think I had
already guessed.

"