“But isn’t it awfully dangerous?”
“Not a bit,” said Barry, airily, “if you know how to use it. Of course, in any ordinary place, and with the country as dry as it is, it wouldn’t do. But you know that rocky place up at the head of that gully—” he jerked his hand towards the hills. “There’s nothing but rocks there and mossy stuff and bare earth—not much earth, either. A few ferns sticking among the lumps of rock. It would be perfectly safe there. Let’s go and try it!”
He sat back on his heels and looked at her with an impish expression of joy in his plan.
“I suppose it would be safe,” Robin said. “The walls of the gully are so steep, and there is no grass there to be set on fire—only a few clumps of bracken, and we could watch them.” Her eye began to kindle. “It would be rather a lark!” she said. “But I wonder what Mr. Merritt would say. He rents that part, you know.”
“Oh, it won’t hurt him. We’ll hunt any of his cows out of the gully, if they’re there. If he hears the bang, and says anything about it, we’ll tell him, of course. I expect he’s used any amount of the stuff himself, blasting out stumps.” Barry jumped up. “Come along, Robin, old chap!”
“All right,” Robin said, recklessly.
“Hurroo!” cried Barry. “I knew you’d be a sport. You’re nearly as good as a boy!” He capered down the rocks ahead of her, and they set off on their way to the gully.
It was an ideal spot for such a lawless enterprise. The gully was a short one, running back between two great rocky hills that were almost bare of timber. At the closed end the walls of rock were very lofty: they could be fairly certain that no flying fragments of stone could reach the top. No stock were to be seen: all the ground was littered with half-buried boulders, among which patches of withered bracken clung. A few rabbits scurried away as they came in sight; but the children were far too excited to think of shooting. The sight, however, gave Robin a flash of common sense.
“We’ll leave the guns and all our cartridges here,” she said, halting beside a big tree near the entrance to the gully—the only tree that grew there. “Put them on this side, and nothing will be likely to touch them when you blow that old cliff to bits!”
“All right,” Barry agreed. “I prospected this place yesterday, you know; there’s a sort of cave between those two great rocks over yonder, and we can hide there while we’re waiting for the bang. Nothing could hit us—it’s as safe as a dugout.” He pranced along, almost running, to the end of the gully, where they halted—two little figures under the walls of frowning grey rock. “That’s the bit of stone I want to shift,” he said, pointing upwards.