“I thought so, sir,” said Ben with a sigh, as he looked in. “Just solid black, and nothing else.”
He thumped the top of the contents with his knuckles, and then tapping the lower hoops they glided down and the staves fell apart, leaving a black block standing upon the table.
“Oh, this is bad luck, sir! horribly bad luck!” groaned Ben. “We shall have to get some powder from somewhere, Plymouth or—yes, Bristol’s the most likely place.”
“Fetch out the other keg, and open that, Ben,” said Roy. “To be sure, sir,” said Ben, and he turned to the closet and bore the second keg to the table. “If this is all right,” he went on, “there’s some hope for us, because we may find some more; but if it has gone bad from both sides it’s all over with us: we can only stand well on the towers and throw stones down at whoever comes.”
Ben’s fingers were as busy as his tongue, and in a few minutes he had the head out of the second keg, looked in, and tapped it with his knuckles.
“Just the same, sir, just the same.”
“Look here, Ben! I’ll have one of these blocks chopped up, and then ground up fine, and we’ll try it with a musket.”
“Good, sir! that’s the right thing to do; but after being wet once, I’m afraid it’ll fizz off now like a firework.”
“You don’t know till you’ve tried, man. Now, let’s see: get an axe, sergeant.”
“If I might ask your pardon, captain, axes aren’t the proper thing to break up a block of gunpowder. I should say a beetle or a mall was the thing.”