About thirty feet of this fuse I laid to the “gun,” with stones along its length to keep it properly in place. Then, with a thumping heart under my shirt, I proceeded down the hill, alone, with a fire-brand glowing hotly in my fist. I looked all about, when I came to the match, and selected my path back up to the camp. Then I touched the end of the creeper—and jerked my fire away, quickly. There was no alarming sputter after all. I tried again. The creeper smoked, giving forth a pungent odour, but the powder must have fallen out for a short distance. I cut off six or seven inches and had the satisfaction of seeing powder in plenty. This time it lighted and began to spit in a hurry. I darted off, stopped, looked back, saw a tiny smoke-snake running down the hill, and again I ran as hard as I could, momentarily expecting something tremendous to happen behind my back. To my surprise I reached the camp and nothing had occurred. I turned about and looked, panting and yet attempting to hold my breath. There was nothing to be seen, save the heap of rocks where my “battery” was planted. I waited and waited. The seconds slipped by; the Links behind me were as silent as the grave. My heart ceased its violent jumping; the thing was going to prove a failure; the Links would think me a fool. “I’ll have to go down and see what’s the matter,” I grumbled. “That fuse is no good.” I had taken two steps when suddenly a great flare of fire leaped upward, the side of the hill appeared to fly into fragments and a roaring detonation split the silence into a thousand ringing reverberations. A cushion of air gave us all a push, and a huge geyser of smoke went upward in rolling, billowy gushes. I wondered in that second, how many pounds of that powder I had put in the “piece” in my natural anxiety to give it a good, square trial. Something screamed weirdly in the air, while we stood speechless, and presently it came whirring down, a rod below the wall, striking the ground with a sounding thud. Yelling in dismay, the second they recovered power to do anything, the Links fell over each other helter-skelter, in their great confusion, and desire to take to the woods. As for myself, I laughed and laughed like a veritable maniac, and threw my arms about myself and jumped in the air repeatedly, as tickled with my exploit as a boy. Then I ran outside and found my cannon, the thing which had whistled as it hurtled back to earth. It was a “goner” and no mistake. Black as a hat, ripped from muzzle to breach, blown to pieces at the plugged-up end, it certainly gave the appearance of having “gone through the war,” but it pleased me not a whit the less. “Why that’s all right,” I assured the surrounding stillness, “I’ll go to work and make a lot of bamboo bombs.” CHAPTER XXV THE TRIBE FRIGHTENED