Scarcely, however, had I attained the height of fifty yards, when,
roaring and rumbling up after me in the most horrible and tumultuous
manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire, and smoke, and sulphur, and
legs and arms, and gravel, and burning wood, and blazing metal, that
my very heart sunk within me, and I fell down in the bottom of the
car, trembling with unmitigated terror. Indeed, I now perceived that I
had entirely overdone the business, and that the main consequences
of the shock were yet to be experienced. Accordingly, in less than a
second, I felt all the blood in my body rushing to my temples, and
immediately thereupon, a concussion, which I shall never forget, burst
abruptly through the night and seemed to rip the very firmament
asunder. When I afterward had time for reflection, I did not fail to
attribute the extreme violence of the explosion, as regarded myself,
to its proper cause- my situation directly above it, and in the line
of its greatest power. But at the time, I thought only of preserving
my life.
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