"That was an exciting business, indeed, Captain Dave," Cyril said, when the Captain brought his story to a conclusion. "If it had not been for your good fortune in finding those kegs of powder, and Pettigrew's idea of using them as he did, you and John might now, if you had been alive, have been working as slaves among the Moors."
"Yes, lad. And not the least lucky thing was that Pettigrew's knife and Jack Brown's tinder-box had escaped the notice of the Moors. Jack had it in an inside pocket sewn into his shirt so as to keep it dry. It was a lesson to me, and for the rest of the time I was at sea I always carried a knife, with a lanyard round my neck, and stowed away in an inside pocket of my shirt, together with a tinder-box. They are two as useful things as a sailor can have about him, for, if cast upon a desert shore after a wreck, a man with a knife and tinder-box may make shift to live, when, without them, he and his comrades might freeze to death."
CHAPTER IX — THE FIRE IN THE SAVOY
The next evening John Wilkes returned after an absence of but half an hour.
"Why, John, you can but have smoked a single pipe! Did you not find your cronies there?"
"I hurried back, Captain, because a man from one of the ships in the Pool landed and said there was a great light in the sky, and that it seemed to him it was either a big fire in the Temple, or in one of the mansions beyond the walls; so methought I would come in and ask Cyril if he would like to go with me to see what was happening."
"I should like it much, John. I saw a great fire in Holborn just after I came over from France, and a brave sight it was, though very terrible; and I would willingly see one again."
He took his hat and cloak and was about to be off, when Captain Dave called after him,—