“Old lady,” I said, “I won’t forget this night.  You’re a trump, and that’s what’s wrong with you.”

She humped herself close up to me.  She had run out the way she was, with nothing on her but her kilt; and she was all wet with the dews and the sea on the black beach, and shook straight on with cold and the terror of the dark and the devils.

“Too much ’fraid,” was all she said.

The far side of Case’s hill goes down near as steep as a precipice into the next valley.  We were on the very edge of it, and I could see the dead wood shine and hear the sea sound far below.  I didn’t care about the position, which left me no retreat, but I was afraid to change.  Then I saw I had made a worse mistake about the lantern, which I should have left lighted, so that I could have had a crack at Case when he stepped into the shine of it.  And even if I hadn’t had the wit to do that, it seemed a senseless thing to leave the good lantern to blow up with the graven images.  The thing belonged to me, after all, and was worth money, and might come in handy.  If I could have trusted the match, I might have run in still and rescued it.  But who was going to trust the match?  You know what trade is.  The stuff was good enough for Kanakas to go fishing with, where they’ve got to look lively anyway, and the most they risk is only to have their hand blown off.  But for anyone that wanted to fool around a blow-up like mine that match was rubbish.

Altogether the best I could do was to lie still, see my shot-gun handy, and wait for the explosion.  But it was a solemn kind of a business.  The blackness of the night was like solid; the only thing you could see was the nasty bogy glimmer of the dead wood, and that showed you nothing but itself; and as for sounds, I stretched my ears till I thought I could have heard the match burn in the tunnel, and that bush was as silent as a coffin.  Now and then there was a bit of a crack; but whether it was near or far, whether it was Case stubbing his toes within a few yards of me, or a tree breaking miles away, I knew no more than the babe unborn.

And then, all of a sudden, Vesuvius went off.  It was a long time coming; but when it came (though I say it that shouldn’t) no man could ask to see a better.  At first it was just a son of a gun of a row, and a spout of fire, and the wood lighted up so that you could see to read.  And then the trouble began.  Uma and I were half buried under a wagonful of earth, and glad it was no worse, for one of the rocks at the entrance of the tunnel was fired clean into the air, fell within a couple of fathoms of where we lay, and bounded over the edge of the hill, and went pounding down into the next valley.  I saw I had rather undercalculated our distance, or over-done the dynamite and powder, which you please.