"No, sir," said the sergeant, and his fingers were heard fumbling with the fastening of the lantern. "What are you doing, man? Why don't you speak?" "Making sure the light's quite out, sir. Can't speak for a moment--feel choking." "Then you hear the enemy approaching?" "No, sir.--Ha! It's quite out! Now, sir, just you go down on one knee and feel." "I don't understand you, sergeant," whispered Lennox; but all the same he bent down on one knee and felt about with his right hand, fully expecting to touch a heap of the stolen grain. "No corn," he said at the end of a few seconds; "but what's this--sand?" "Take a pinch up, and taste it, sir. I hope it is." "Taste it?" said Lennox half-angrily. "Yes, sir," said the sergeant out of the darkness, and the faint rustle he made and then a peculiar sound from his lips indicated that he was setting the example. The young officer hesitated no longer, but gathering up a pinch of the dry sand from the ground, he just held it to the tip of his tongue. "Why, sergeant," he whispered excitedly, "it's powder!" "That's right, sir," replied the man. "Gunpowder--a train; a heavy train running right and left." "Nonsense!" "Truth, sir. I had the lantern close to it, and might have fired it if I'd dropped the lantern, as I nearly did." "But what does it mean? Here, sergeant, that's what we have to see." "Yes, sir," replied the sergeant in a hoarse whisper, "and don't you grasp it? One way it goes off towards the veldt--" "And the other way towards the colonel's quarters," whispered Lennox. "Here, sergeant, there must be some desperate plot--a mine, perhaps, close up to that hut. Quick! Follow me." The sergeant did not need the order, for he was already moving in the direction of the cluster of huts, but going upon his hands and knees, leaving the lantern behind and feeling his way, guiding himself by his fingers so as to keep in touch with the coarse, sand-like powder, which went on in an easily followed line towards the back of the colonel's hut. It seemed long, but it was only a matter of a few seconds before they were both close up, feeling in the darkness for some trace of that which imagination had already supplied; and there it was in the darkness. "Here's a bag, sergeant," whispered Lennox. "A bag, sir? Here's five or six, and one emptied out, and--Run, sir, for your life! Look at that!" For there was a flash of light from somewhere behind them, and as, with a bag of powder which he had caught up in his hand, Lennox turned round, he could see what appeared to be a fiery serpent speeding at a rapid rate towards where, half-paralysed, he stood. The Kopje Garrison--by George Manville Fenn CHAPTER NINE. GUY FAWKES WORK.