To explain the particular comfort of our position, it may be right to
mention that the magazine of a brig sloop is exactly under the gunroom.
Three of the American skippers had been quartered on the gunroom mess, and
they were all at table. Snuff, snuff, smelled one, and another sniffled,

"Gunpowder, I guess, and in a state of ignition."

"Will you not send for the gunner, sir?" said the third.

Splinter did not like it, I saw, and this quailed me.

The captain's bell rang. "What smell of brimstone is that, steward?" "I
really can't tell," said the man, trembling from head to foot; "Mr Splinter
has sent for the gunner, sir."

"The devil!" said Deadeye, as he hurried on deck. We all followed. A
search was made.

"Some matches have caught in the magazine," said one.

"We shall be up and away like sky--rockets," said another.

Several of the American masters ran out on the jib--boom, coveting the
temporary security of being so far removed from the seat of the expected
explosion, and all was alarm and confusion, until it was ascertained that
two of the boys, little skylarking vagabonds, had stolen some pistol
cartridges, and had been making lightning, as it is called, by holding a
lighted candle between the fingers, and putting some loose powder into the
palm of the hand, and then chucking it up into the flame. They got a sound
flogging, on a very unpoetical part of their corpuses, and once more the