them up within my fence in the nature of a terrace, that so it raised
the ground within about a foot and a half; and thus I made me a cave
just behind my tent, which served me like a cellar to my house.

It cost me much labour, and many days, before all these things were
brought to perfection, and therefore I must go back to some other things
which took up some of my thoughts. At the same time it happened, after
I had laid my scheme for the setting up my tent, and making the cave,
that a storm of rain falling from a thick dark cloud, a sudden flash of
lightning happened, and after that a great clap of thunder, as is
naturally the effect of it. I was not so much surprised with the
lightning, as I was with a thought which darted into my mind as swift as
the lightning itself; O my powder! my very heart sunk within me, when I
thought, that at one blast all my powder might be destroyed; on which,
not my defence only, but the providing me food, as I thought, entirely
depended; I was nothing near so anxious about my own danger; though, had
the powder took fire, I had never known who had hurt me.

Such impression did this make upon me, that, after the storm was over, I
laid aside all my works, my building, and fortifying, and applied myself
to make bags and boxes to separate the powder, and to keep it a little
and a little in a parcel, in hope, that, whatever might come, it might
not all take fire at once, and to keep it so apart, that it should not
be possible to make one part fire another. I finished this work in about
a fortnight; and I think my powder, which in all was about two hundred
and forty pounds weight, was divided in not less than a hundred parcels.
As to the barrel that had been wet, I did not apprehend any danger from
that, so I placed it in my new cave, which in my fancy I called my
kitchen; and the rest I hid up and down in holes among the rocks, so
that no wet might come to it, marking very carefully where I laid it.