"Here you are," I said. "This is ordinary gunpowder, and this other one's my stuff. It looks harmless enough, doesn't it?"
Joyce took both flasks and examined them with interest. "You've not brought very much of it," she said. "I was hoping we were going to have a really big blow-up."
"It will be big enough," I returned consolingly, "unless I've made a mistake."
"Where are you going to do it?" she asked.
"Somewhere at the back of Canvey Island," I said. "There's no one to wake up there except the sea-gulls, and we can be out of sight round the corner before it explodes. I've got about twenty feet of fuse, which will give us at least a quarter of an hour to get away in."
"What fun!" exclaimed Joyce. "I feel just like an anarchist or something; and it's lovely to know that one's launching a new invention. We ought to have kept that bottle of champagne to christen it with."
"Yes," I said regretfully; "it was the real christening brand too."
There was a short silence. "I've thought of a name for it," cried Joyce suddenly. "The powder, I mean. We'll call it Lyndonite. It sounds like something that goes off with a bang, doesn't it?"
I laughed. "It would probably suggest that to the prison authorities,"
I said. "Anyhow, Lyndonite it shall be."
We finished breakfast, and going up on deck I proceeded to haul in the anchor, while Joyce stowed away the crockery and provisions below. For once in a way the engine started without much difficulty, and as the tide was running out fast it didn't take us very long to reach the mouth of the creek.