The fuse sputtered and flashed. It was a fairly long fuse. Would it last thirty seconds? Longer perhaps. Johnny felt the hair at the back of his neck prickle and rise. It was a tense moment. Before him was the bear, behind, a narrow passage and at his feet that strange explosive, liquid air and carbon.
“Will it explode?” he said aloud.
“It will,” Donald, his companion, replied. Then, as if awaking to a new and terrible danger, he fairly shouted in Johnny’s ear, “Come on! Run! Run for your life!” Without a further word, he turned and fled.
Johnny, who understood not at all, stood still watching that fuse grow shorter and shorter.
Then came the bear. With tongue lolling, white teeth all agleam, he came roaring out of the shadows. Johnny turned as if about to flee. Then, remembering that a bear was fast, that in that narrow passageway, he had no chance, he turned resolutely about.
The bear, apparently catching a glimpse of that sputtering spark of fire, reared himself on his hind legs. With a sudden inspiration, Johnny seized the bag of strange explosives and hurled it at the bear. To his vast surprise, he saw the bear catch it neatly between his steel-like jaws.
“A chilly mouthful,” was Johnny’s mental comment as he turned and fled.
Never in all his life had he travelled so fast as now. Unconsciously, as he ran, he waited for something. Just as he reached the last straight stretch that led to daylight, the thing happened. There came a dull explosion and Johnny, as if seized by soft but powerful hands, was lifted and pushed up and out of the cave to land, sprawling, on a pile of gravel.
“Ah! There you are!” Donald exclaimed. “Ten seconds more and you would have been too late.
“But what happened?” he asked in a puzzled tone. “You had enough explosive there to fairly blow the roof off the mountain.”