inutes. Their whole enterprise was but labor
lost. They listened, breathing short. No sound came.

"Gone out," said Heywood, gloomily. "Or else they saw it."

He climbed the bamboo scaffold, and stood looking over the wall. Rudolph
perched beside him,--by the same anxious, futile instinct of curiosity,
for they could see nothing but the night and the burning stars.

"Gone out. Underground again, Rudie, and try our first plan." Heywood
turned to leap down. "The Sword-Pen looks to set off his mine
to-morrow morning."

He clutched the wall in time to save himself, as the bamboo frame leapt
underfoot. Outside, the crest of the slope ran black against a single
burst of flame. The detonation came like the blow of a mallet on
the ribs.

"Let him look! Let him look!" Heywood jumped to the ground, and in a
pelting shower of clods, exulted:--

"He looked again, and saw it was
The middle of next week!"

"Come on, brother mole. Spread the news!"

He ran off, laughing, in the wide hush of astonishment.

CHAPTER XX

THE HAKKA BOAT

"Pretty fair," Captain Kneebone said. "But that ain't the end."

This grudging praise--in which, moreover, Heywood tamely acquiesced--was
his only comment. On Rudolph it had singular effects: at first filling
him with resentment, and almost making him suspect the little captain of
jealousy; then amusing him, as chance words of no weight; but in the
unreal days that followed, recurring to convince him with all the force
of prompt and subtle fore-knowledge. It helped him to learn the cold,
salutary lesson, that one exploit does not make a victory.

The springing of their countermine, he found, was no deliverance. It had
two plain results, and no more: the crest of the high field, without,
had changed its contour next morning as though a monster had bitten it;
and when the day had burnt itself out in sullen darkness, there burst on
all sides an attack of prolonged and furious exasperation. The fusillade
now came not only from the landward sides, but from a long flotilla of
boats in the river; and although these vanished at dawn, the fire never
slackened, either from above the field, or from a distant wall, newly
spotted with loopholes, beyond the ashes of the go-down. On the night
following, the boats crept closer, and suddenly both gates resounded
with the blows of battering-rams. These and later assaults were beaten
off. By daylight, the nunnery walls were pitted as with small-pox;