A sheet of flame shot suddenly into the sky. It looked like a tiny volcano, belching up fire and débris and pushing up through the midst of it a great black canopy of smoke. This was followed by the report of an explosion that echoed and reëchoed through the village, reverberating on the rocks across the harbour, and filling the whole country around with its noise—at once startling and terrifying. Then the light as suddenly went out, a shower of burning sticks and shreds of blazing canvas drifted lazily down through the air, and a cloud of smoke hung over the spot.
Tom and Bob trembled like rushes. It seemed as though every particle of strength had left them. There could be but one conclusion. They had blown up the camp. Harvey and all his crew were, perhaps, killed.
Bob was the first to speak.
“Come, Tom,” he said. “We must get to camp before we are seen. Brace up and try to paddle.”
Somehow or other they got to camp and dragged the canoe ashore. They carried the box up to the tent and locked it up in the big chest. Bob’s hand trembled so he could hardly put the key into the lock.
Tom seated himself, dejectedly, on the edge of one of the bunks, the picture of despair.
“I guess I may as well go and give myself up first as last,” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to go to jail, if they’re killed. What can there have been in the cave? I didn’t see anything to explode, did you?”
“No,” answered Bob, “unless it was something over in that pile of stuff in one corner. I didn’t examine it, but they must have had something stored or hidden underneath there, either kerosene or gunpowder. By Jove! Tom, I remember now hearing Captain Sam Curtis say he had missed a keg of blasting-powder that he had bought for the Fourth of July, and he said he thought some of the sailors down the island had stolen it. That’s where it went to; it was hidden in that corner.”
“That doesn’t help matters much, if they’re all dead,” said Tom. “I’ll be to blame, just the same. Oh, Bob, what shall I do?”
“Whatever you do,” answered Bob, “I stand my share of it, just as much as you. I’m just as guilty as you are. But don’t go to pieces that way, Tom. We don’t know yet whether they are hurt or not. The best thing we can do is to get down there as quick as ever we can. Shall we take the canoe and make a race for it?”