We were in the powder-magazine of the Castle—­a rough, walled cellar, with barrels all round it, and one with the top staved in in the centre.  The powder from it lay in a black heap upon the floor.  Beyond there was another door, but it was locked.

‘We are no better off than before,’ cried Duroc.  ‘We have no key.’

‘We have a dozen!’ I cried.

‘Where?’

I pointed to the line of powder barrels.

‘You would blow this door open?’

‘Precisely.’

‘But you would explode the magazine.’

It was true, but I was not at the end of my resources.

‘We will blow open the store-room door,’ I cried.

I ran back and seized a tin box which had been filled with candles.  It was about the size of my busby—­large enough to hold several pounds of powder.  Duroc filled it while I cut off the end of a candle.  When we had finished, it would have puzzled a colonel of engineers to make a better petard.  I put three cheeses on the top of each other and placed it above them, so as to lean against the lock.  Then we lit our candle-end and ran for shelter, shutting the door of the magazine behind us.

It is no joke, my friends, to be among all those tons of powder, with the knowledge that if the flame of the explosion should penetrate through one thin door our blackened limbs would be shot higher than the Castle keep.  Who could have believed that a half-inch of candle could take so long to burn?  My ears were straining all the time for the thudding of the hoofs of the Cossacks who were coming to destroy us.  I had almost made up my mind that the candle must have gone out when there was a smack like a bursting bomb, our door flew to bits, and pieces of cheese, with a shower of turnips, apples, and splinters of cases, were shot in among us.  As we rushed out we had to stagger through an impenetrable smoke, with all sorts of debris beneath our feet, but there was a glimmering square where the dark door had been.  The petard had done its work.

In fact, it had done more for us than we had even ventured to hope.  It had shattered gaolers as well as gaol.  The first thing that I saw as I came out into the hall was a man with a butcher’s axe in his hand, lying flat upon his back, with a gaping wound across his forehead.  The second was a huge dog, with two of its legs broken, twisting in agony upon the floor.  As it raised itself up I saw the two broken ends flapping like flails.  At the same instant I heard a cry, and there was Duroc, thrown against the wall, with the other hound’s teeth in his throat.  He pushed it off with his left hand, while again and again he passed his sabre through its body, but it was not until I blew out its brains with my pistol that the iron jaws relaxed, and the fierce, bloodshot eyes were glazed in death.