owling wind, driving rain, dark as the ace of spades, and Tom
Connor not coming back for an hour!"

Dark it surely was. The night was black. Not a glimmer of light in any
direction. Even the town itself, only a quarter-mile away, seemed to
have been blotted from the face of the earth.

As he had noticed in coming across the flats that there were lights
still burning in two of the other houses, the patient plotter, in order
to give the inmates a chance to get to bed and to sleep, sat waiting on
the leeward side of the building for a full half hour. At the end of
that time, however, he arose, moved along a few steps, and then, going
down on his hands and knees, crept under the house. Ten minutes later he
came crawling out again, feet foremost. Once outside, he struck a match,
and sheltering it in his cupped hands he applied the flame to the end of
something which looked like a long, stiff cord about as thick as a lead
pencil. Presently there was a sharp "spit" from the ignited "cord,"
blowing out the match and causing John to shake his hand with a gesture
of pain, as though it had been scorched.

Next moment Long John sprang to his feet and fled away into the
darkness; not straight across lots as he had come, but by a roundabout
way which would bring him into town from the eastern side.

Then, for two minutes, except for the roaring of the wind, all was
silence.

Joe and I were sound asleep on the floor of Tom's back room, when by a
single impulse we both sprang out of bed with an irrepressible cry of
alarm, and stood for a moment trembling and clinging to each other in
the darkness. The sound of a frightful explosion was ringing in our
ears!

"What was it, Joe?" I cried. "Which direction?"

"I don't know," my companion replied. "I hope it isn't an accident up at
the Pelican. Let's get into our clothes, Phil."

Lighting the lamp, we quickly dressed, and putting on our hats and
overcoats we went out into the storm. All was dark, except that in the
windows of each of the occupied houses in the row we could see a light
shining. The whole street had been roused up.

"It must have been a powder-magazine," Joe shouted in my ear. "Or else
the boiler in the engine-house of the Pelican. What do you say, Phil?
Shall we go up there? We might be able to help."

"Yes, come on!" I cried. "Let's go and see first, though, if Tom hasn't
a second lantern. We shall save time by it if he has."

Our hurried search for a lantern w