no! no!" cried Syme in a kind of frenzy, "not the Colonel too! I
will never believe it!"

"Will you believe your eyes?" asked the other, and pointed to the beach.

Many of their pursuers had waded into the water shaking their fists,
but the sea was rough, and they could not reach the pier. Two or three
figures, however, stood on the beginning of the stone footway, and
seemed to be cautiously advancing down it. The glare of a chance lantern
lit up the faces of the two foremost. One face wore a black half-mask,
and under it the mouth was twisting about in such a madness of nerves
that the black tuft of beard wriggled round and round like a restless,
living thing. The other was the red face and white moustache of Colonel
Ducroix. They were in earnest consultation.

"Yes, he is gone too," said the Professor, and sat down on a stone.
"Everything's gone. I'm gone! I can't trust my own bodily machinery. I
feel as if my own hand might fly up and strike me."

"When my hand flies up," said Syme, "it will strike somebody else," and
he strode along the pier towards the Colonel, the sword in one hand and
the lantern in the other.

As if to destroy the last hope or doubt, the Colonel, who saw him
coming, pointed his revolver at him and fired. The shot missed Syme,
but struck his sword, breaking it short at the hilt. Syme rushed on, and
swung the iron lantern above his head.

"Judas before Herod!" he said, and struck the Colonel down upon the
stones. Then he turned to the Secretary, whose frightful mouth was
almost foaming now, and held the lamp high with so rigid and arresting
a gesture, that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced
to hear.

"Do you see this lantern?" cried Syme in a terrible voice. "Do you see
the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You
did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey,
twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is
not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not
made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats.
You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind;
you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old
Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire
of apes will never have the wit to find it."

He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and
then, whirling it twice roun