“What?”
“Ffft, bang!” said Prokop, and threw his hand up in the air.
“What’s that?”
“Krakatoe. Kra-ka-tau. A volcano, see? It . . . tore off my finger. I don’t know what. . . .” He stopped and added slowly: “A frightful thing, you know.”
Thomas watched him carefully as if he were waiting for something. “And so,” he began after a moment, “you’re still on explosives?”
“Yes, always have been.”
“With success?”
Prokop gave a queer kind of laugh. “You’d like to know, eh? No, my friend, it won’t do that way . . . not that way,” he repeated, swaying his head in a drunken manner. “My friend, by itself—by itself—it . . .”
“What?”
“Kra-ka-tit. Krakatit. Krrakatitt. And by itself—I only left a little powder on the table, see? All the rest I col—collected in a snuff-box. There was only a l-l—little powder left on the table, and suddenly . . .”
“It exploded.”
“Exploded. Only a trace, only the powder that I had dropped. It was hardly visible. Then the electric light globe—a kilometre away. It wasn’t that. And I—in the arm-chair, like a bit of wood. Tired, you know. Too much work. And suddenly . . . crash! I was thrown on to the floor. The window was blown out, and the globe wasn’t there. A detonation like—the explosion of a lyddite car-
