Barry burst into a shout of excited laughter.
“Oh, my goodness, Robin, did you see him! Won’t there be a jolly row! A big bit of rock just sailed through the air, and absolutely flattened him—he never knew what hit him. And the pig was not! Just listen to his brother—he’s got shell-shock!”
They scrambled out of their hole, and gazed at the slab of stone, from which protruded a melancholy curly tail. It was mercifully clear that the deceased pig could not have known what hit him.
“Now you’ll have to tell Mr. Merritt,” said Robin.
“Yes, of course. I’ll pay him for poor piggy. Well, he shouldn’t have hidden in that bracken until it was too late. Anyhow, he died gloriously on the field of battle, and it’s better than living to be made into pork sausages. Wasn’t it a topping blast! Come and see what it has done to my rock.”
The smoke of the explosion still lingered about the head of the gully, mingling with air already murky with bush-fire smoke; but they could see that the charge had done its work very thoroughly. Not only was the big rock gone, shattered to pieces, but the whole face of the rocky wall, for many feet, had been split off: the new, clean-looking stone showed curiously against the weathered and moss-grown stretch on either side. They looked at it respectfully.
“Well, we’ve made our mark,” Robin said, at length. “No sign of burning anywhere, is there, Barry?”
They searched carefully, but found no trace of fire: the explosion had confined itself to the head of the gully, save for the flying fragments. Mr. Merritt’s pig remained the one sacrifice.
“ ’Told you I knew all about it,” said Barry, triumphantly. “I vote we go home now: shooting rabbits would be too tame altogether after a bang like that!”
“All right,” Robin agreed. She looked curiously at the stretch of newly-exposed stone.