ay, while the air we
breathed was suffocating, but we had to bear it.

My father, Morgan, and I were the first to reach the place, and there
and then seized the cumbrous door which was made on a slope, like a
shutter, to slide sidewise, while just above was a small opening leading
into a rough room beyond, between the magazine and the outer wall, in
which was a sort of port-hole well closed and barred.

"Shall I get through and open that port, sir?" cried Morgan, his voice
sounding muffled and hoarse. "It will give us fresh air and light."

"Yes, and perhaps flames and sparks," cried my father. "No, no, down
with you and hand out the powder-kegs. Form a line, men, and pass them
along to the door."

"Hurrah!" came in muffled tones; and directly after, from somewhere
below, Morgan's voice cried--

"Ready there! One!"

"Ready!--right!" cried a man by me, and a quick rustling sound told that
the first powder-keg was being passed along.

"Ready!--two!" cried Morgan; and I pictured in my own mind Morgan down
in the half cellar, handing out keg after keg, the men working eagerly
in the dark, as they passed the kegs along, and a cheer from the outside
reaching our ears, as we knew that the dangerous little barrels were
being seized and borne to some place of safety. Not that in my own mind
I could realise any place of safety in an open enclosure where sparks
might be falling from the burning building, and where, if the Indians
could only guess what was going on, flaming arrows would soon come
raining down.

It was a race with death within there, as I well knew; and as I stood
fast with my father's hand clutching my shoulder, and counted the kegs
that were handed out, my position, seemed to me the most painful of all.
If I had been hard at work I should not have felt it so much, but I was
forced to be inert, and the sounds I heard as I stood breathing that
suffocating air half maddened me.

Hissing that grew fiercer and fiercer as the fire licked up the
moisture, sharp cracking explosions as the logs split, and must, I knew,
be sending off bursts of flame and spark, and above all a deep
fluttering roar that grew louder and louder till all at once there was a
crash, a low crackling, and then, not two yards away from where I stood,
a broad opening all glowing fire.

The men nearest to us uttered a yell, and there was the rush of feet,
but my father's voice rose clear above all.

"Halt!" he cried; and discipline