I found that my right hand was streaming with blood from various cuts made by the razor-edges of the broken glass of the window. More blood was pouring from a gash on my forehead; but my eyes had escaped injury. When I moved, I found I suffered acute pain; though no bones seemed to be broken. The concussion had completely deafened me; and, as I found afterwards, my left eardrum had been perforated, so that even to this day I can hear nothing on that side.
All about me the office was in confusion. Every pane of glass had been blown inward from the windows and the place looked as though a whirlwind had swept through it, scattering furniture and papers in its track. The shock had dazed me; and for several minutes I stood gazing stupidly at the havoc around me. It was, I am sure, at least five minutes before I grasped what had happened. As soon as I did so, I made my way, still in intense pain, down the stairs and into the quadrangle.
The pavements were littered with fragments of broken glass which had fallen outward in the breaking of the windows; but there was not so much of this as I had expected, since most of the panes had been driven inward by the explosion. Quite a crowd of people were running out of the building and making in the direction of the new Chemistry Department in University Avenue. I followed them, noticing as I passed the Square that all the chimney-pots of the houses seemed to have been swept off, though I could see no traces of them on the ground. Later on, I found that they had been blown down on the further side of the terrace.
When I came in sight of the Chemistry building I was amazed, even though I was prepared for a catastrophe. One whole wing had been reduced to a heap of ruins, a mere pile of building-stone and joists flung together in utter confusion. Here and there among the debris, jets of steam and dust were spouting up; and from time to time came an eruption of small stones from the wreckage. The remainder of the edifice still stood almost intact save for its broken windows and shattered doors.
What astonished me at the time was that the whole scene recalled a cinema picture—violent motion without a sound to accompany it. I saw spouts of dust, falling masses of masonry, people running and gesticulating in the most excited manner; yet no whisper of sound reached me. It was only when someone came up and spoke directly to me that I discovered that I was temporarily stone deaf; for I could see his lips moving but could hear nothing whatever.
Like everyone else, I began to remove the debris. I think that we understood even then that it was hopeless to think of saving anyone from this wreckage, but we were all moved to do something which might at least give us the illusion that we were helping. As I pulled and tugged with the others, I began to appreciate the enormous power of the explosive which had been at work. In an ordinary concussion, iron can be bent out of shape; but here I came across steel rafters which were cut clean through as though by a knife. I remember thinking vaguely that the explosive must have acted, as dynamite does, against the solid materials around it instead of spending its force upwards; for otherwise the whole place would have suffered a bombardment from flying blocks of stone.
For some time I toiled with the others. I saw Nordenholt’s figure close at hand. Then the sky seemed to take on a tinge of violet which deepened suddenly. I saw a black spot before my eyes; and apparently I fainted from loss of blood.
Even now, the causes of the Chemistry Department disaster are unknown. Henley-Davenport and his two assistants perished instantaneously in the explosion—in fact Henley-Davenport’s body was never recovered from the wreckage at all. A third assistant, who had been in the next room at the time, lived long enough to tell us the exact stage at which the catastrophe occurred; but even he could throw no direct light upon its origin.
From Henley-Davenport’s notes, which we found in his house, it seems clear that his efforts had been directed towards producing the disintegration of iron; and that on the morning of the accident he had completed his chain of radioactive materials which furnished the accelerated evolution of energy required to break up the iron atoms. As we know now, he succeeded in his experiment and his iron yielded the short-period isotopes of chromium, titanium and calcium until the end-product of the series—argon—was produced. The four successive alpha-ray changes, following each other at intervals of a few seconds, liberated a tremendous store of intra-atomic energy; but, knowing the extremely minute quantities with which Henley-Davenport worked, it seems difficult to believe that the explosion which destroyed his laboratory was produced by this trace of material. To me it seems much more probable that his apparatus was shattered at the moment of the first disintegration of iron and that thus some of the short-period products were scattered abroad throughout the room, setting up radioactive change in certain of the metallic objects which they touched. No other explanation appears to fit the facts. We shall never learn the truth of the matter now; but knowing Henley-Davenport’s care and foresight, I cannot see any other way of accounting for the violence of the explosion.
Luckily for us, no radioactive gas is produced by the disintegration of iron; for had there been any such material among the decay products it is probable that most of those who had run to the scene of the disaster would have perished.
When I recovered consciousness again I
