"Hawkins," I cried, "what are those bubbles of red gas?"

"What bubbles?" Hawkins turned as if he had been shot. "Great Scott,
Griggs! There were no bubbles of red gas rising out of that stuff,
were there?"

"There they go again," I said, pointing to the vat, from which a new
ebullition of scarlet vapor had just risen. "What does it mean?"

"Mean?" shrieked Hawkins, turning white and trembling in every limb.

"Yes, mean!" I repeated, shaking him. "Does it mean that----"

"It means that the cursed stuff has over-heated itself, after all.
Lord! Lord! However did it happen? Something must have been impure.
Something----"

"Never mind something. What will it do?"

"It--it--oh, my God, Griggs! It'll blow this house into ten thousand
pieces within two minutes! Why--why, there's power enough in that
little vat to demolish the Brooklyn Bridge, according to my
calculations. There's enough explosive force in that much Hawkinsite
to wreck every office building down-town!"

"And we're shut in here with it!"

"Yes! Yes! But let us----"