the table was
decorated with bread and butter and the remnants of the cold pheasant,
while a kettle hissed away cheerfully on the Primus.

"I don't believe you've been to bed at all, Joyce," I said. "And yet
you look as if you'd just slipped out of Paradise by accident."

She laughed, and putting her hand in my side-pocket, took out my
handkerchief to lift off the kettle with.

"I didn't want to sleep," she said. "I was too happy, and too
miserable. It's the widest-awake mixture I ever tried." Then, picking
up the teapot, she added curiously: "Where's the powder? I expected to
see you arrive with a large keg over your shoulder."

I sat down at the table and produced a couple of glass flasks, tightly
corked.

"Here you are," I said. "This is ordinary gunpowder, and this other
one's my stuff. It looks harmless enough, doesn't it?"

Joyce took both flasks and examined them with interest. "You've not
brought very much of it," she said. "I was hoping we were going to
have a really big blow-up."

"It will be big enough," I returned consolingly, "unless I've made a
mistake."

"Where are you going to do it?" she asked.

"Somewhere at the back of Canvey Island," I said. "There's no one to
wake up there except the sea-gulls, and we can be out of sight round
the corner before it explodes. I've got about twenty feet of fuse,
which will give us at least a quarter of an hour to get away in."

"What fun!" exclaimed Joyce. "I feel just like an anarchist or
something; and it's lovely to know that one's launching a new
invention. We ought to have kept that bottle of champagne to christen
it with."

"Yes," I said regretfully; "it was the real christening brand too."

There was a short silence. "I've thought of a name for it," cried
Joyce suddenly. "The powder, I mean. We'll call it Lyndonite. It
sounds like something that goes off with a bang, doesn't it?"

I laughed. "It would probably suggest that to the prison authorities,"
I said. "Anyhow, Lyndonite it shall be."

We finished breakfast, and going up on deck I proceeded to haul in the
anchor, while Joyce stowed away the crockery and provisions below. For
once in a way the engine started without much difficulty, and as the
tide was running out fast it didn't take us very long to reach the
mouth of the creek.

Once outside, I set a course down stream as close to the northern
shore as I dared go. Except for a rusty-looking steam tramp we had the
whole river to ourselv