Apparently some animal had wintered
there, for the interior had a rank odor; but we crawled on over rocks
until we came to the obstructing stone sixty or seventy feet from the
entrance.
We had planned to drill a hole in the rock, blast it into pieces, and
thus clear a passage to what lay beyond it. On closer inspection,
however, we found that it was almost impossible to set the drill and
deal blows with the hammer. But the stone rested on another rock, and we
believed that we could push powder in beneath it and so get an upward
blast that would heave the stone either forward or backward, or perhaps
even break it in halves. We therefore set to work, thrusting the powder
far under the stone with a blunt stick, until we had a charge of about
four pounds. When we had connected the fuse we heaped sand about the
base of the stone, to confine the powder.
The blast was finally ready; and then the question who should fire it
arose. The three feet of fuse would, we believed, give two full minutes
for whoever lighted it to get out of the Den; but fuse sometimes burns
faster than is expected, and the safety fuse made in those days was not
so uniform in quality as that of present times.
Pages:
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207