An Explosion
Having given up all hopes of blowing up the bridge, Chris and his comrades turned their whole attention to the lines of waggons. The train that had come in on the previous evening had added to the number, although it had taken some of them away with it up country. They now made out that there were eight waggons piled with cases, that almost certainly contained rifles; six with tarpaulins closely packed over them, and these they guessed contained ammunition boxes; four, each with two large cases that might contain field guns; while the two with what they were sure were big guns still remained on the siding.

"I should say that about four or five pounds of dynamite would be an abundance for each of those ammunition waggons; less than that would do, as we could, by slitting the tarpaulins, put a pound among the cases, and if one case were exploded it would set all the others off. There is no trouble about them. I will just take a note. They are on the second siding; there are eight other waggons in front of them and six behind, so we cannot make any mistake about that. There must be a good heavy charge under the rifle trucks, for we shall have to blow them all well into the air to bend and damage them enough to be altogether unserviceable. As for the guns, and especially the heavy ones, it is a difficult question. Of course, if we could open the cases and get at the breech-pieces, and put dynamite among them, we could damage all the mechanism so much that the guns would be useless until new breech-pieces were made, which I fancy must be altogether beyond the Boers; but as there is no possibility of opening them, we must trust to blowing the guns so high in the air that they will be too much damaged for use by the explosion and fall. We have got altogether two hundredweight; now two pounds to each ammunition waggon will take twelve pounds. What shall we say for the rifles?"