But it was not only the heart-rending sound that almost paralysed poor Mimi with terror.  What she saw was sufficient to fill her with evil dreams for the remainder of her life.  The whole place looked as if a sea of blood had been beating against it.  Each of the explosions from below had thrown out from the well-hole, as if it had been the mouth of a cannon, a mass of fine sand mixed with blood, and a horrible repulsive slime in which were great red masses of rent and torn flesh and fat.  As the explosions kept on, more and more of this repulsive mass was shot up, the great bulk of it falling back again.  Many of the awful fragments were of something which had lately been alive.  They quivered and trembled and writhed as though they were still in torment, a supposition to which the unending scream gave a horrible credence.  At moments some mountainous mass of flesh surged up through the narrow orifice, as though forced by a measureless power through an opening infinitely smaller than itself.  Some of these fragments were partially covered with white skin as of a human being, and others—­the largest and most numerous—­with scaled skin as of a gigantic lizard or serpent.  Once, in a sort of lull or pause, the seething contents of the hole rose, after the manner of a bubbling spring, and Adam saw part of the thin form of Lady Arabella, forced up to the top amid a mass of blood and slime, and what looked as if it had been the entrails of a monster torn into shreds.  Several times some masses of enormous bulk were forced up through the well-hole with inconceivable violence, and, suddenly expanding as they came into larger space, disclosed sections of the White Worm which Adam and Sir Nathaniel had seen looking over the trees with its enormous eyes of emerald-green flickering like great lamps in a gale.

At last the explosive power, which was not yet exhausted, evidently reached the main store of dynamite which had been lowered into the worm hole.  The result was appalling.  The ground for far around quivered and opened in long deep chasms, whose edges shook and fell in, throwing up clouds of sand which fell back and hissed amongst the rising water.  The heavily built house shook to its foundations.  Great stones were thrown up as from a volcano, some of them, great masses of hard stone, squared and grooved with implements wrought by human hands, breaking up and splitting in mid air as though riven by some infernal power.  Trees near the house—­and therefore presumably in some way above the hole, which sent up clouds of dust and steam and fine sand mingled, and which carried an appalling stench which sickened the spectators—­were torn up by the roots and hurled into the air.  By now, flames were bursting violently from all over the ruins, so dangerously that Adam caught up his wife in his arms, and ran with her from the proximity of the flames.