“Good man!” said Barry, happily. “That fellow won’t go bathing again.”
“Neither will I, until we have a good look round,” said the lady with the gun. “No fun in bathing with snakes. Get your boots on, Barry, and we’ll make sure his mate is not about.” They beat the bushes with sticks, poked into every crevice, and finally decided that to bathe was safe; and being, by this time, extremely hot, bathed for a very long while, without giving another thought to the possibility of snakes—which, indeed, would scarcely have ventured into the excited waters of the pool when people as energetic as Robin and Barry were disporting themselves in it. Finally, having dressed with reluctance, they pondered on what should be their next step.
“Too early to shoot,” Robin said. “There won’t be many rabbits about, anyhow: the heat and the smoke will keep them in their burrows. That fire up in the ranges must be getting bigger, Barry.”
“The smoke is certainly worse,” Barry remarked. “I hope the old fire stays where it is, that’s all.” He dived into the little canvas bag in which he carried his cartridges, and produced something wrapped in paper. “Know what that is, Robin?”
“No,” said Robin: “I don’t. Rum-looking stuff. What is it, Barry? Soap?”
Barry regarded with a proud eye the stick of putty-like substance he had unwrapped.
“Soap!” he said, scornfully. “I don’t cart yellow soap about with me, you silly! That’s gelignite.” He tossed up the plug and caught it, and Robin gave a cry of alarm.
“You idiot, Barry! Do take care—it might go off.”
“So might you,” was Barry’s impolite response. “Gelignite doesn’t go off like that—you’ve got to have a detonator, and fuse. I’ve got ’em, too.” He took from his bag a length of thick black cord, and a small tin box, handling the latter with considerable respect. It contained an innocent-looking little copper tube, closed at one end.
“That’s the detonator,” he explained. “You stick the end of the fuse into it and nip the tube with pliers so’s she can’t slip out. Then you shove the closed end of the detonator down into the gelignite, and everything’s ready.”