ether.

He clutched the chain by which the cone hung, and the thing
sank an infinitesimal amount as he struck it. A circle of glowing
red appeared about him, and a tongue of flame, released from the
chaos within, flickered up towards him. An intense pain assailed
him at the knees, and he could smell the singeing of his hands. He
raised himself to his feet, and tried to climb up the chain, and
then something struck his head. Black and shining with the
moonlight, the throat of the furnace rose about him.

Horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuel
on the rail. The gesticulating figure was bright and white in the
moonlight, and shouting, "Fizzle, you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of
women! You hot-blooded hound! Boil! boil! boil!"

Suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, and
flung it deliberately, lump after lump, at Raut.

"Horrocks!" cried Raut. "Horrocks!"

He clung crying to the chain, pulling himself up from the
burning of the cone. Each missile Horrocks flung hit him. His
clothes charred and glowed, and as he struggled the cone dropped,
and a rush of hot suffocating gas whooped out and burned round him
in a swift breath of flame.

His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary red
had passed, Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head
streaked with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain,
and writhing in agony--a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous
creature that began a sobbing intermittent shriek.

Abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster's anger passed. A
deadly sickness came upon him. The heavy odour of burning flesh
came drifting up to his nostrils. His sanity returned to him.

"God have mercy upon me!" he cried. "O God! what have I
done?"

He knew the thing below him, save that it still moved and
felt, was already a dead man--that the blood of the poor wretch
must be boiling in his veins. An intense realisation of that agony
came to his mind, and overcame every other feeling. For a moment
he stood irresolute, and then, turning to the truck, he hastily
tilted its contents upon the struggling thing that had once been a
man. The mass fell with a thud, and went radiating over the cone.
With the thud the shriek ended, and a boiling confusion of smoke,
dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. As it passed, he saw
the cone clear again.

Then he staggered back, and stood trembling, clinging to the
rail with both hands.