Jack hoped that his new stonework was sufficient to protect the logs at the base of the blockhouse. But one of the barrels, under the impetus gained in its passage down the hill, had jumped the boulders, and breaking as it crashed over, burst into flame within an inch or two of the woodwork. Another line of barrels was starting down the slope. Jack had called up his best marksmen at the first alarm, and ordered them to take pot-shots at the twinkling points of light, or the figures above, dimly lit up by the matches attached to the barrels. Whether any of the shots got home he could not tell; another set of barrels was trundling down towards the fort.
It appeared to Jack that nothing could save the blockhouse. Burning resin could only be extinguished by a deluge of water, and he had no means of bringing water from the tank in sufficient quantities. The logs were dry, and, when once fairly alight, would burn furiously. Barney suggested dropping a heavy boulder on the barrel most dangerously near, but Jack saw that the effect of this would be merely to spread the flames without necessarily extinguishing them. The fire would continue beneath the stone; it would lick the lowest logs, and in a few minutes the whole base of the blockhouse would be ablaze. The imminence of the danger acted as a spur to Jack's resourcefulness. It flashed upon him that there was one chance of saving the fort. Calling to Samba to follow him, he rushed from the roof of the blockhouse down the ladders connecting it with the second floor and this with the ground, and ran at full speed to his hut, where he seized an empty tobacco-tin and searched for a piece of wire. For a few moments he could not lay hands on any, but he then bethought himself of the wired cork of a Stephens' ink-bottle. Wrenching this out, he hastened to the underground magazine where the ammunition was, stored. Samba had preceded him thither with a lighted candle in a little lantern of bamboo.
Among the ammunition was a keg of loose powder sent up by Mr. Martindale for refilling cartridge cases. While Samba very cautiously held the lantern out of harm's way, Jack, with the brad of a penknife, bored two thin holes in the tin and two corresponding holes in the lid. Then he inserted the wire and filled the tin with powder. Clapping on the lid and firmly securing it by twisting up the wire, he rushed back to the blockhouse, up to the roof, and cleared out all the men helter-skelter, bidding them go with Samba and bring baskets full of earth to the base of the wall.