As he had noticed in coming across the flats that there were lights still burning in two of the other houses, the patient plotter, in order to give the inmates a chance to get to bed and to sleep, sat waiting on the leeward side of the building for a full half hour. At the end of that time, however, he arose, moved along a few steps, and then, going down on his hands and knees, crept under the house. Ten minutes later he came crawling out again, feet foremost. Once outside, he struck a match, and sheltering it in his cupped hands he applied the flame to the end of something which looked like a long, stiff cord about as thick as a lead pencil. Presently there was a sharp “spit”from the ignited “cord,” blowing out the match and causing John to shake his hand with a gesture of pain, as though it had been scorched.
Next moment Long John sprang to his feet and fled away into the darkness; not straight across lots as he had come, but by a roundabout way which would bring him into town from the eastern side.
Then, for two minutes, except for the roaring of the wind, all was silence.
Joe and I were sound asleep on the floor of Tom’s back room, when by a single impulse we both sprang out of bed with an irrepressible cry of alarm, and stood for a moment trembling and clinging to each other in the darkness. The sound of a frightful explosion was ringing in our ears!
“What was it, Joe?”I cried. “Which direction?”
“I don’t know,”my companion replied. “I hope it isn’t an accident up at the Pelican. Let’s get into our clothes, Phil.”
Lighting the lamp, we quickly dressed, and putting on our hats and overcoats we went out into the storm. All was dark, except that in the windows of each of the occupied houses in the row we could see a light shining. The whole street had been roused up.
“It must have been a powder-magazine,”Joe shouted in my ear. “Or else the boiler in the engine-house of the Pelican. What do you say, Phil? Shall we go up there? We might be able to help.”
“Yes, come on!”I cried. “Let’s go and see first, though, if Tom hasn’t a second lantern. We shall save time by it if he has.”