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Updated: June 28, 2025
He called a prayer-meeting at his house the neighbors came they sang and supplicated God, not Charles the First, and then Oliver asked for volunteers to follow him to the government powder-magazine near by, and capture it ere the Royalists used it for the undoing of the Lord's people. "His salvation is nigh unto them that fear Him, that His glory may dwell in the land!"
But if my advice were asked just now, I should answer, That the said method being now impossible, we are in the case of a ship's captain who defends himself the best he can, and when all resources are exhausted, has, rather than surrender on shameful conditions, to fire the powder-magazine, and blow up his ship. You remember that of your Francois I." FORS L'HONNEUR; ah yes, very well!
"Missed stays, and got aground right under the guns of the fort. He was ordered to surrender, but refused to do so, though there was not the least chance for him to make a successful resistance. He was determined that the rebels should not have his vessel, and, rushing down into the powder-magazine, he said his prayers, and coolly laid his lighted cigar on an open barrel of powder.
And presently the powder-magazine blew up into the air with a crash as if the earth were rent in twain, heaven burst to shivers, and hell sunk ten thousand fathoms deeper. ROLLER. Now my guards looked behind them there lay the city, like Sodom and Gomorrah the whole horizon was one mass of fire, brimstone, and smoke; and forty hills echoed and reflected the infernal prank far and wide.
"And can you guess, Pencroft," asked the reporter, "how it happened, or what can have occasioned the explosion?" "Oh! Mr Spilett, nothing is more simple," answered Pencroft. "A convict vessel is not disciplined like a man-of-war! Convicts are not sailors. Of course the powder-magazine was open, and as they were firing incessantly, some careless or clumsy fellow just blew up the vessel!"
But before the sun set there were more serious disasters. Much powder and shot had been expended by the Spaniard to very little purpose, and so a master-gunner on board Admiral Oquendo's flag-ship was reprimanded for careless ball-practise. The gunner, who was a Fleming, enraged with his captain, laid a train to the powder-magazine, fired it, and threw himself into the sea. Two decks blew up.
At that moment he felt a shock which he afterwards described as resembling an earthquake or the blowing up of a powder-magazine. Part of the planking near to where he stood was shattered. Some of the guns appeared almost to leap for an instant a few inches into the air. Gaining the deck he ascertained that an attack of Russian torpedo-boats was going on.
There was no doubt but that the grasshopper controlled an electric current intended to blow up the powder-magazine! M. de Chagny, who seemed to have recovered all his moral force from hearing Christine's voice, explained to her, in a few hurried words, the situation in which we and all the Opera were. He told her to turn the scorpion at once. There was a pause.
At last the blazing vessel left boats and schooner far behind, and the flames rose in great flakes and tongues above her top-masts, while the smoke rolled in dense black volumes away to leeward. While the awe-stricken crew watched her there came a sudden flash of bright white flame, as if a volcano had leaped out of the ocean. The powder-magazine had caught.
A second hostile meeting of electricity took place, and the fluid darted down the side of the frigate's mainmast, passing through the quarter-deck in the direction of the powder-magazine. Captain M , the first-lieutenant, master, and fifty or sixty of the men, were struck down by the violence of the shook.
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