"Ha! ha!" laughed their wild guide, in a sort of screech, "here be de grandest jools, de finest dimunds of all, what buys all de rest!"
She lifted a corner of the skin, removed the loose head of a cask, and holding the lamp close over the opening, bade them look in. They did so, and the effect was powerful as well as instantaneous, for there, only a few inches below the flaring light, lay an open barrel of gunpowder!
The senses of Sam Shipton returned like a flash of lightning—interest, surprise, admiration vanished like smoke, as he uttered a shout, and, with one hand seizing the wrist of the withered arm that held the lamp, with the other he hastily drew the leathern cover over the exposed powder and held it down.
"You old curmudgeon!" he cried; "here, Robin, take the lamp from her, and away with it into the outer cave."
Our hero promptly obeyed, while the other two, under an instinct of self-preservation, had already fled in the same direction, followed by a shrill and half-fiendish laugh from the old woman.
"Well, I never had such a narrow escape," said Sam, as he issued from the cave, still holding Meerta firmly, though not roughly, by the wrist.
"Why, there 's enough powder there, I do believe," said Jim Slagg, "to split the whole island in two."
