ng in the midst. Around the fire a
ring of warriors naked to the breech-clout kept time in a slow shuffling
dance to a monotonous chanting; and for onlookers there was an outer
ring of squatting figures--the visiting Tuckaseges, as I supposed.

Beyond the Indian lodges, and a little higher up the gentle slope of the
savanna, were the troop shelters; and beyond these, half concealed in
the fringing of the boundary forest, was the tepee-lodge of the women.

On the bare hillside beneath the powder magazine I made no doubt I was
in plainest view from the great fire, and the proof of this conclusion
came shortly in a bellowing hail from Falconnet.

"Ho, Jack Warden!" he called, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands to
lift the hail above the chanting of the Indian dancers. "Have a look at
that shelter whilst you are over there and make sure 'twill shed rain if
the weather shifts."

Now some such long-range marking down as this was what I had been
angling for. So I came to attention and saluted in soldierly fashion,
thereby raising a great laugh among my pseudo-comrades around the
trooper fire--a laugh that pointed shrewdly to the baronet-captain's
lack of proper discipline. But that is neither here nor there. Having my
master's order for it, I climbed to the foot of the powder rock.

Here the bare sight of all the stored-up devastation set me athirst with
a fierce longing for leave to snap a pistol in the well-laid mine. For
if these enemies of ours had planned their own undoing they could never
have given a desperate foeman a better chance. To hold the pine boughs
of the rude shelter in place they had piled a great loose wall of stones
around and over the cargo; and the firing of the powder, heaped as it
was against the backing cliff of the boulder, would hurl these weighting
stones in a murderous broadside upon the camp across the stream.

But since my dear lady would also share the hazard of such a broadside,
I had no leave to blow myself and the powder convoy to kingdom come, as
I thirsted to--could not, you will say, having neither pistol to snap
nor flint and steel to fire a train. Nay, nay, my dears, I would not
have you think so lightly of my invention. Had this been the only
obstacle, you may be sure I should have found a way to grind a firing
spark out of two bits of stone.

But being otherwise enjoined, as I say, I turned my back upon the
temptation and held to the business in hand, which was to reach and