Nevertheless, after the gentleman, against his better judgment, had been prevailed upon to enter the bucket, he looked so overgrown in it—like an oak-tree in a tub—that the boys could hardly manage the windlass for laughing.
Landed at last in safety upon the bed-rock, Mr. Keith found that the hole drilled by the Chinaman had been enlarged by the giant powder to the size of a great kettle. Into this hole he poured about four quarts of black gunpowder and inserted the end of a fresh fuse. Finally he filled the rest of the cavity with fine dry earth and “tamped” this down very firmly.
“I’ve put in a heavy charge, Sing Wung,” he said, as he turned from the man and stepped back into the bucket. “After you’ve lighted the fuse, you must run for your life. You mustn’t go to sleep.”
“All yightee, no sleepee!” responded the Chinaman, who, notwithstanding his oblique eyes, could sometimes see a joke.
“The Chinese ought to understand gunpowder, considering that they invented it,” remarked Mr. Keith, as he emerged into the upper air. “I hope I sha’n’t have to go underground again to teach Sing Wung.”
The boys secretly echoed this hope, having found their host’s weight a severe strain to their muscles.
That this weight had been also a severe strain upon the rope—not a new one—had not occurred to them or to Mr. Keith, or, indeed, to Sing Wung himself.
“It is evident that Yeck Wo is not coming,” said Mr. Keith again, consulting his watch. “After this next explosion there will be a great deal of hard pan to be hoisted out, and we must have Mateo to help us. If you’ll bring him, Paul, I’ll be much obliged.”
Paul went, and was away some time. Before his return Sing Wung had finished drilling the hole in the rock and begun to put in the charge. Mr. Keith and Kirke had let the bucket down to the bottom of the well and stood ready to turn the windlass at a second’s notice.
Suddenly a faint light glimmered in the darkness below, and the Chinaman leaped into the bucket yelling,—