360 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



not blast the muggers. The difficulty was only how to ma- 

 nage it ; yet the more we talked of it, the more feasible did 

 the scheme appear to be. 



The brutes keep pretty constant to the same quarters, 

 when the fish are plentiful ; and we soon ascertained that 

 Sidhoo's murderer was well known in the neighborhood of 

 the nullah. He had on several occasions carried off sheep, 

 goats, pigs, and children ; and had once attempted to drag a 

 buffalo, whom he had caught drinking, into the water ; but, 

 from all accounts, came off second best in this rencontre. 

 There not being enough of water in the nullah to drown the 

 buffalo, the nugger soon found that he had caught a Tartar : 

 and after being well mauled by the buffalo's horns, he was 

 fain to scuttle off and hide himself among the mud. 



I had observed, when blasting the snags, that the concus- 

 sion produced by the discharge had the effect of killing all 

 the fish within the range of some twenty or thirty yards. 

 After every explosion, they were found in great numbers, 

 floating on the surface of the water with their bellies upper- 

 most. It now occurred to me, that if we could only get 

 within a moderate distance of the mugger, if we did not blow 

 him to pieces, we would at all events give him a shock that 

 would rather astonish him. An explosion of gunpowder under 

 water communicates a much severer shock to the objects in 

 its immediate vicinity, than the same quantity of powder ex- 

 ploded in the air ; the greater density of the water enabling 

 it, as it were, to give a harder blow. 



Having made our arrangements, Mr. Hall, my brother, and 

 myself, got into a small canoe, with the blasting apparatus on 

 board, and dropped down the stream to where the nullah dis- 

 charged its waters into the Rohan. We then got out and 

 proceeded to a village close by, where we obtained, for a few 

 annas, the carcass of a young kid. A flask with about six 

 pounds of gunpowder, and having the conducting wires at- 

 tached, was then sewn into the kid's belly. Two strong ropes 



