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We bought a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred pounds of bacon, flour, beans, blasting-powder, picks and shovels in it; we bought two sorry-looking Mexican "plugs," with the hair turned the wrong way and more corners on their bodies than there are on the mosque of Omar; we hitched up and started. It was a dreadful trip. But Oliver did not complain.
Marble commenced to excavate from this very hard porphyry rock in search of a subterranean vault, into which had been poured, as was supposed, the ill-gotten gain of all the pirates, from Captain Kidd down to the last outlaw of the ocean. Twenty-seven years the sound of the hammer and the drill and the thud of blasting-powder echoed through the leafy forests, and then all was hushed.
Tillou instructed the others in prospecting, and they went to work with pick and shovel then with drill and blasting-powder. The prospect of immediately becoming millionaires vanished. "One week of this satisfied me. I resigned," is Mark Twain's brief comment. The Humboldt reports had been exaggerated. The Clemens-Clagget-Oliver- Tillou millionaire combination soon surrendered its claims.
If a body desires to talk private business with one of the editors, he must call him outside, for no hint milder than blasting-powder or nitroglycerin would be likely to move the bores out of listening-distance.
If you're in sight when I drive my hoss past here again I'll lick you, even if I have to use blasting-powder and a can-opener to get you out of that suit." Jared Chick went apart into the bushes and Farr accompanied him. "This is a rather vulgar and discouraging adventure for high ideals to run into so soon," averred the younger man. "I am not discouraged."
And even then only dynamite or blasting-powder could have forced a path, and it would have been exceedingly difficult to handle such materials within the tunnel without blocking the approach completely, while leaving open the farther exit.
Mark grasped the idea, without explanation, and ran back with his companion, leaving the shouting, cursing, and firing behind, to descend with him to the mouth of the mine, and then downward to the big stone shed, where Dummy tore open the great oaken closet, and drew out a bag of the coarse blasting-powder used in the mine. "Feel in that box, Master Mark; that's it. You know. The fuse cord."
That pestiferous letter of Shrapnel's was animadverted on, of course; and, 'I should like you to have heard it, Austin, the colonel said, 'just for you to have a notion of the kind of universal blow-up those men are scheming, and would hoist us with, if they could get a little more blasting-powder than they mill in their lunatic heads. Now Cecilia wished for Mr. Austin's opinion of Dr.
Mark, at a word from his father, marched up alongside of Nick Garth, who gave him a surly nod, and seemed to be about to speak, but checked himself, and then let his curiosity master him. "What ha' they got in them baskets?" he said, nodding to a couple strung from poles, and each hanging from two men's shoulders, "bread and cheese?" "No: blasting-powder." "Eh? What for?" said the man, staring.
"I hope not," said Sir Edward. "I mean for us to make a bold rush." "That's right, master," said the man, whose fellows were listening eagerly; "but I've been thinking about Sir Morton yonder, and my young lady." "Yes? What about them?" asked Sir Edward. "You're going to use blasting-powder?" "Well, what of that?" "I was thinking about them inside. We wouldn't like to hurt them."
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