The other two rifles were soon disposed of in the same manner.
"Let the rifles cook in the fire for an hour," smiled Reade," and the barrels will be too crooked for a bullet ever to get through one again."
"What are you going to do with the cartridges, though?"
"Fire a midnight salute with them," Tom answered briefly. "Wait and you'll hear some noise."
Alf Drew cautiously approached camp when he felt the pangs of hunger. The cigarette fiend must have been satisfied, for Tom and Harry had already gotten the meal. But Reade, without a word of rebuke to their supposed helper, allowed young Drew to help himself to all he wanted in the way of hot food and coffee.
Bringing midnight two hours nearer—-that is to say, at ten o'clock, Tom and Harry, aided this time by Alf, built a large fire-pile in a gully at a safe distance from camp. The wood was saturated with oil, a powder flash laid, then Tom laid a fuse-train. Lighting the fuse, the three speedily decamped.
Presently they saw the flames of the newly kindled fire shooting up through the trees. Then the volleying began, for Tom had carefully deposited through the fire-pile all the captured cartridges.
For fully five minutes the cartridges continued to explode, in ragged volleys.
"It's a regular Fourth of July," Harry laughed, back in camp. "Tom, who's going to take the first trick of watch tonight?"
"Neither one of us," Reade replied. "We'll both get a sound sleep."