'Where?'

I pointed to the line of powder barrels.

'You would blow this door open?'

'Precisely.'

'But you would explode the magazine.'

It was true, but I was not at the end of my resources.

'We will blow open the store-room door,' I cried.

I ran back and seized a tin box which had been filled with candles. It
was about the size of my busby--large enough to hold several pounds of
powder. Duroc filled it while I cut off the end of a candle. When we had
finished, it would have puzzled a colonel of engineers to make a better
petard. I put three cheeses on the top of each other and placed it above
them, so as to lean against the lock. Then we lit our candle-end and ran
for shelter, shutting the door of the magazine behind us.

It is no joke, my friends, to be among all those tons of powder, with
the knowledge that if the flame of the explosion should penetrate
through one thin door our blackened limbs would be shot higher than the
Castle keep. Who could have believed that a half-inch of candle could
take so long to burn? My ears were straining all the time for the
thudding of the hoofs of the Cossacks who were coming to destroy us. I
had almost made up my mind that the candle must have gone out when there