if they weren't.

He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the
rock. Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the
river. The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a
six-foot piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of
the bag firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the cartridge
in the water with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on
the surface, ready for lighting. Andy dipped the cartridge in melted
bees'-wax to make it water-tight. 'We'll have to leave it some time
before we light it,' said Dave, 'to give the fish time to get over their
scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again; so we'll want it
well water-tight.'

Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave's suggestion, bound a strip of sail
canvas--that they used for making water-bags--to increase the force of
the explosion, and round that he pasted layers of stiff brown paper--on
the plan of the sort of fireworks we called 'gun-crackers'. He let the
paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses
of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with stout
fishing-line. Dave's schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his
inventions out to nothing. The cartridge was rigid and solid enough
now--a formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure. Andy sewed
on another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted tallow,
twisted a length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it
in tallow again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he'd
know where to find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it. Then he
went to the camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in their
jackets in a billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner. Dave
and Jim were at work in the claim that morning.

They had a big black young retriever dog--or rather an overgrown pup, a
big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them
and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a
stock-whip. Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin
of appreciation of his own silliness. He seemed to take life, the world,
his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He'd retrieve
anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw
away. They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good
distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found