Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/55

Rh In vain they were relieved every twelve hours, and from time to time took a respite in which to neutralize the effect of the poison; in the end the odious essence frustrated their precautions and ate away their eyeballs.

It was as if Nature, the eternal sphynx, furious at having her secrets torn from her, revenged herself upon the lowest auxiliaries of the defeats inflicted upon her by the scientists.

More expeditious than the corrosive vapors, but as artful and as silently inevitable in its effect, the dynamic force masked itself and, not always succeeding in gaining in a single blow its revenge upon the men whom it had enslaved, it lay in wait and trapped its victims one by one. Danger was not present in the spot where the machine, in full activity, rumbled, bellowed and stamped, and shook the cage of thick masonry in which was plunged, like a giant buried alive, its mass of steel, copper and cast iron. Its roars kept the vigilance of its guardians ever keen. And just when it was ready to free itself from its shackles, to burst forth, to shatter everything around it, the monster would be betrayed by its gauge, and the accumulated steam would inoffensively escape through the safety valves. But far away from the generator, the fly-wheel and the cranks, the machine conspired against its servitors. Simple bands of leather detached themselves from the principal mass like the long tentacles of an octopus, and, through holes let into the walls, ran tributary machines. These endless bands wound and unwound upon their reels with a grace and a smoothness that banished any idea of cruelty and assault. They moved so rapidly that they seemed immobile. And there were even moments in which they