The rest
were bound, but the fakir rose and writhed toward him on his heels,
with his sound arm stretched up in an attitude of despair beside the
withered one.
A chorus of bugles burst out from the British camp, and a volley ripped
through the blackness.
"All right! Here goes!" said Brown. And he aimed down into the shadowy
powder-magazine, and pulled the trigger.
Ten minutes later, an army three thousand and five hundred strong
marched in through the gap made in the outer wall by a granary that
had spread itself through--and not over--what was in its way. There
were seventeen tons of powder that responded to the invitation of
Brown's bullet.
XIV.
Explosions are among the few things--or the many things, whichever
way you like to look at it!--that science can not undertake to harness
or account for. When a gun blows up, or a powder-magazine, the shock
kills whom it kills, as when a shell bursts in a dense-packed firing-
line. You can not kill any man before his time comes, even if a thousand
tons of solid masonry combine with you to whelm him, and go hurtling
through the air with him to absolutely obvious destruction.
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