Curious to know what had caused the man’s clothes to catch fire, Raxworthy turned him over. Tightly grasped in the pirate’s right hand was a tinder-box.
“He’d gone below to have three draws and a spit on the quiet, the skulking lubber, when the gas got him, sir,” opined the coxswain.
The midshipman was not satisfied with the explanation. The pirate didn’t appear to have an opium pipe in his possession. Besides, the smoke was increasing.
Raxworthy continued his investigations. On the other side of a bulkhead he saw something that made his heart miss a beat.
He was in the junk’s ammunition room. There were several barrels, one with its head knocked off. Along the floor was a fuse—a primitive affair of teased rope soaked in saltpetre and then dried. It was spluttering. The feeble sparks were within six inches of a suspicious-looking heap of black dust that had been piled up against the opened barrel.
The Chinaman he had just examined must have had time to light the fuse before being overcome by the gas. This could be explained by the fact that the fumes took several seconds to sink through the open hatchways to the space ‘tween decks.
Deliberately the midshipman knelt down and gripped the burning fuse between his finger and thumb. The spluttering sparks burnt his hands, yet he dare not relax his grasp. Nor could he risk jerking the fuse clear, since the heap of powder would be scattered and some of the grains come in contact with the burning end.
Not until he had backed for a distance of two or three yards did he drop the fuse and stamp upon it.
“Well done, sir, if I may say so,” exclaimed the petty officer. “You’ve saved us from being blown sky-high.”
“We shouldn’t have known much about it,” rejoined the midshipman grimly. “Carry on.”