“Powder!” gasped the sailorman. “Looks like two hundred kegs of it here, sir.”
“Hand me the light and force open one of the barrels,” Dave directed.
In a few moments the head of one of the barrels had been sprung. Taking a handful of powder outside, Dave placed it on a sheet of paper from one of his pockets, and touched a lighted match to one corner of the paper. When the traveling flame reached the powder there was a bright flash, accompanied by a puff of smoke.
“That powder is excellent,” remarked Darrin.
“Aye, aye, sir,” assented the seaman. “Are you thinking, sir, of using any of this stuff to plant among the heathen outside?”
“Only in case they succeed in getting into the compound,” the young ensign replied, coolly. “I am going to ask the ladies if they prefer to group themselves around this building. Then, at the last moment, if all our forces are driven away from the ramparts, we can fall back on this magazine. When we see that the Chinese are bound to overwhelm us, a match dropped in a powder train here will save all of the women from Chinese torture. What do you think of the idea, Sampson?”
“All in the day’s work for men of the Navy, and the best thing, I reckon, sir, for the ladies under the circumstances,” answered the seaman.
“I believe that will be the general opinion,” answered Dave. “Sampson, you know how to stack this thing so that a flash of light in a powder train will set off the whole magazine?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“May I leave you here and depend upon you to fix the mine so that it will go up in the air at my order?”