in very well for their own destruction:  for by two o’clock I had so worked, that I had on the first cart the phalanx of fuses; on the second a goodly number of kegs, cartridge-cases and cartridge-boxes, full of powder, explosive cottons and gelatines, and liquid nitro-glycerine, and earthy dynamite, with some bombs, two reels of cordite, two pieces of tarred cloth, a small iron ladle, a shovel, and a crow-bar; the cab came next, containing a considerable quantity of loose coal; and lastly, in the private carriage lay four big cans of common oil.  And first, in the Laboratory, I connected a fuse-conductor with a huge tun of blasting-gelatine, and I set the fuse on the ground, timed for the midnight of the twelfth day thence; and after that I visited the Main Factory, the Carriage Department, the Ordnance Store Department, the Royal Artillery Barracks, and the Powder Magazines in the Marshes, traversing, as it seemed to me, miles of building; and in some I laid heaps of oil-saturated coal with an explosive in suitable spots on the ground-floor near wood-work, and in some an explosive alone:  and all I timed for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day.  Hot now, and black as ink, I proceeded through the town, stopping with perfect system at every hundredth door:  and I laid the faggots of a great burning:  and timed them all for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day.

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Whatever door I found closed against me I drove at it with a maniac malice.

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Shall I commit the whole dark fact to paper?—­that deep, deep secret of the human organism?

As I wrought, I waxed wicked as a demon!  And with lowered neck, and forward curve of the lower spine, and the blasphemous strut of tragic play-actors, I went.  For here was no harmless burning which I did—­but the crime of arson; and a most fiendish, though vague, malevolence, and the rage to burn and raven and riot, was upon me like a dog-madness, and all the mood of Nero, and Nebuchadnezzar:  and from my mouth proceeded all the obscenities of the slum and of the gutter, and I sent up such hisses and giggles of challenge to Heaven that day as never yet has man let out.  But this way lies a spinning frenzy....

* * * * *

I have taken a dead girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have touched the corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, and crushed her teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her breast, like the snake-stamping zebra, mad, mad...!

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