Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/396

368 He even jostled the wounded, the idea of vengeance made him deaf to their death rattle. Cartridges were constantly exploding beneath his feet, shots whistled in his ears, he could have thought himself upon the battlefield during the decisive fusillade.

The heat was becoming intolerable. The flaming naphtha was asphyxiating him. In this extremity he addressed but one prayer to God, not to die until he had killed Béjard.

God granted his prayer.

At the moment when, at the end of his strength, Paridael was about to give up the struggle, what remained of the cartridges blew up in a mass, in one supreme explosion. The last vestiges of the Béjard factory leaped into the air. Another red and black tulip brightened in a flash of light.

Two shades tightly entwined fought in the midst of a lake of fire.