water now playing on it.

It seemed to start from the ground, a massive pillar of fire, and
all round it was an empty space--a zone no human being could approach
for fear of being at once roasted and shriveled up to death. "The
bomb got down to the big gas main," observed a voice close to him.
"It'll be days before they get THAT fire under!"

He, Sherston, felt marvelously calm. This strange, awful visitation
had made for him a breathing space in which to reconsider what he
had better do, and suddenly he decided that he would go and consult
Mr. Pomeroy. But before doing that he must force himself to go
back and fetch certain documents which fortunately he had kept....

He made his way, with a great deal of difficulty--for it was as
if all London had by now flocked to this one afflicted area--by
a circuitous way to the Strand. Tramping through a six-inch-deep
flood of broken glass he made his way by the Embankment and the
Waterloo Bridge steps to the upper level, that leading to, and
past, Peter the Great Terrace.

A vast host was now westward from over the river, and he felt the
electric currents of joyous excitement, retrospective fear, and,
above all, of eager, almost ferocious, curiosity, linking up rapidly
about him. The rough and ready cordon of special constables seemed
powerless to dam the human tide, and caught in that tide's eddies,
Sherston struggled helplessly.

"Let me through," he shouted at last. "I MUST get through!"