two o'clock
By nine I had 820 fuses ; and judging those sufficient to commence with , got into the motor , and took it round to a place called the East Laboratory , a series of detached buildings , where I knew that I should find whatever I wanted : and I prepared my mind for a day 's labour . In this place I found incredible stores : mountains of percussion-caps , more chambers of fuses , small-arm cartridges , shells , and all those murderous explosive mixtures , a-making and made , with which modern savagery occupied its leisure in exterminating itself : or , at least , savagery civilised in its top-story only : for civilisation was apparently from the head downwards , and never once grew below the neck in all those centuries , those people being certainly much more mental than cordial , though I doubt if they were genuinely mental either -- reminding one rather of that composite image of Nebuchadnezzar , head of gold , breast brazen , feet of clay -- head man-like , heart cannibal , feet bestial -- like aegipeds , and mermaids , and puzzling undeveloped births . However , it is of no importance : and perhaps I am not much better than the rest , for I , too , after all , am of them . At any rate , their lyddites , melanites , cordites , dynamites , powders , jellies , oils , marls , and civilised barbarisms and obiahs , came in very well for their own destruction : for by two o'clock I had so worked , that I had on the first cart the phalanx of fuses ; on the second a goodly number of kegs , cartridge-cases and cartridge-boxes , full of powder , explosive cottons and gelatines , and liquid nitro-glycerine , and earthy dynamite , with some bombs , two reels of cordite , two pieces of tarred cloth , a small iron ladle , a shovel , and a crow-bar ; the cab came next , containing a considerable quantity of loose coal ; and lastly , in the private carriage lay four big cans of common oil . And first , in the Laboratory , I connected a fuse-conductor with a huge tun of blasting-gelatine , and I set the fuse on the ground , timed for the midnight of the twelfth day thence ; and after that I visited the Main Factory , the Carriage Department , the Ordnance Store Department , the Royal Artillery Barracks , and the Powder Magazines in the Marshes , traversing , as it seemed to me , miles of building ; and in some I laid heaps of oil-saturated coal with an explosive in suitable spots on the ground-floor near wood-work , and in some an explosive alone : and all I timed for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day . Hot now , and black as ink , I proceeded through the town , stopping with perfect system at every hundredth door : and I laid the faggots of a great burning : and timed them all for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day . * * * * * Whatever door I found closed against me I drove at it with a maniac malice .