“Why, sergeant,” he whispered excitedly, “it’s powder!”
“That’s right, sir,” replied the man. “Gunpowder – a train; a heavy train running right and left.”
“Nonsense!”
“Truth, sir. I had the lantern close to it, and might have fired it if I’d dropped the lantern, as I nearly did.”
“But what does it mean? Here, sergeant, that’s what we have to see.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the sergeant in a hoarse whisper, “and don’t you grasp it? One way it goes off towards the veldt – ”
“And the other way towards the colonel’s quarters,” whispered Lennox. “Here, sergeant, there must be some desperate plot – a mine, perhaps, close up to that hut. Quick! Follow me.”
The sergeant did not need the order, for he was already moving in the direction of the cluster of huts, but going upon his hands and knees, leaving the lantern behind and feeling his way, guiding himself by his fingers so as to keep in touch with the coarse, sand-like powder, which went on in an easily followed line towards the back of the colonel’s hut.
It seemed long, but it was only a matter of a few seconds before they were both close up, feeling in the darkness for some trace of that which imagination had already supplied; and there it was in the darkness.
“Here’s a bag, sergeant,” whispered Lennox.
“A bag, sir? Here’s five or six, and one emptied out, and – Run, sir, for your life! Look at that!”
For there was a flash of light from somewhere behind them, and as, with a bag of powder which he had caught up in his hand, Lennox turned round, he could see what appeared to be a fiery serpent speeding at a rapid rate towards where, half-paralysed, he stood.
Chapter Nine.
Guy Fawkes Work
The light of the fired train had hardly flashed before the first sentry who saw it, fired, to be followed by one after another, till the bugles rang out, first one and then another, whose notes were still ringing when there was a muffled roar, then another, and another, till six had shaken the earth and a series of peculiar metallic clashes deafened all around.
But before the first sentry had raised his piece to his shoulder and drawn, the sergeant, seen in the brilliant light of the running train, seemed to have gone frantically mad.
“Chuck, sir, chuck!” he yelled, though Lennox needed no telling. The light which suddenly shone on the back of the cluster of sheet-iron huts had shown him what was necessary, and after raising the bag he had picked up with both hands high above his head, and hurling it as far as he could, he dashed at the others he could see packed close up against the colonel’s hut, so that between him and the sergeant five had been torn from the ground and hurled in different directions outward from the buildings, leaving only the contents of a sixth and seventh bag which had been emptied in a heap connected with the long train before the others had been laid upon it in a little pile.
They were none too soon, for the last bag had hardly been hurled away with all the strength that the young officer could command, and while the sergeant was yelling to him to run, before the hissing fiery serpent was close upon them.
Fortunately the sergeant’s crawling and the following trampling of the excited pair had broken up and crushed in the regularly laid train, scattering the powder in all directions, so that the rush of the hissing fire came momentarily to an end and gave place to a sputtering and sparkling here and there, giving Lennox and the sergeant time to rush a few yards away in headlong flight. There was a terrific scorching blast, and a tremendous push sent them staggering onward in a series of bounds before they fell headlong upon their faces; while at intervals explosion after explosion followed the fiery blast, the burning fragments setting off three of the other bags, fortunately away from where the pair had fallen.
The sergeant was the first to recover himself, and raising his face a little from the ground, he shouted, “Don’t move, sir! Don’t move! There’s two or three more to go off yet.”
Lennox said something, he did not know what, for he was half-stunned, the shock having had a peculiar bewildering effect. But at the second warning from his companion he began to grasp what it meant, and lay still without speaking; but he raised his head a little, to see that beneath the great canopy of foul-smelling smoke that overhung them the earth was covered with little sputtering dots of fire, either of which, if it came in contact, was sufficient to explode any powder that might remain.
But two bags had escaped, the explosive blast rising upward; and the danger being apparently at an end, the principal actors in the catastrophe roused to find officers hurrying to meet them, and men coming forward armed with pails of water to dash and scatter here and there till every spark was extinct and the remaining powder had been thoroughly drenched.
“Much hurt, old chap?” cried Dickenson, who was the first to reach his friend, and he supplemented his question by eagerly feeling Lennox all over.
“No! No: I think not,” said Lennox, “except my head, and that feels hot and scorched. Can you see anything wrong?”
“Not yet; it’s so dark. Here, let’s take you to the doctor.”
“No, no!” cried Lennox. “Not so bad as that. But tell me – what about the officers sleeping in those huts?”
“All right, I believe; but the backs of the houses are blown in, and the fellows at home were blown right out of their beds.”
“No one hurt?”
“Oh yes; some of them are a bit hurt, but only bruised. But you? Oh, hang it all! somebody bring a light. Hi, there, a lantern!”
“No, no!” roared the colonel out of the darkness. “Are you mad? Who’s that asking for a light?”
“Mr Dickenson, sir.”
“Bah! Keep every light away. There may be another explosion.”
The colonel gave a few sharp orders respecting being on the alert for an expected attack to follow this attempt – one that he felt to have been arranged to throw the little camp into confusion; and with all lights out, and a wide berth given to the neighbourhood of the headquarters, the troops stood ready to receive the on-coming Boers with fixed bayonets.
But an hour passed away, and the doubled outposts and those sent out to scout had nothing to report, while all remained dark and silent in the neighbourhood of the damaged huts.
Meanwhile Dickenson had hurried Lennox and the sergeant off to the doctor’s quarters, where they were examined by that gentleman and his aids.
“Well, upon my word, you ought to congratulate yourself, Lennox.”
“I do, sir,” was the reply, made calmly enough.
“And you too, sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man stolidly.
“Why, my good fellow, you ought to have been blown all to pieces.”
“Ought I, sir?”
“Of course you ought. It’s a wonderful escape.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir. What about my back hair, sir?”
“Singed off, what there was of it; and yours too, Lennox. Smart much?”
“Oh yes, horribly,” said the latter.
“Oh, well, that will soon pass off. Threw yourselves down on your faces – eh?”
“No. We were knocked down.”
“Good thing too,” said the doctor. “Saved your eyes, and the hair about them. A wonderful escape, upon my word. Yes: you ought to have been blown to atoms. – Eh? What’s that, sergeant?”
“I say we should have been, sir, if we hadn’t