And that terrible compound, gunpowder, has been the occasion of many
another daring deed, requiring desperate resolution, to save others at
the expense of a death perhaps more frightful to the imagination than
any other. Listen to a story of the King's birthday in Jersey 'sixty
years since'--in 1804, when that 4th of June that Eton boys delight in,
was already in the forty-fourth year of its observance in honor of the
then reigning monarch, George III.
All the forts in the island had done due honor to the birthday of His
Majesty, who was then just recovered from an attack of insanity. In each
the guns at noon-day thundered out their royal salute, the flashes had
answered one another, and the smoke had wreathed itself away over the
blue sea of Jersey. The new fort on the hill just above the town of St.
Heliers had contributed its share to the loyal thunders, and then it was
shut up, and the keys carried away by Captain Salmon, the artillery
officer on guard there, locking up therein 209 barrels of gunpowder,
with a large supply of bombshells, and every kind of ammunition such as
might well be needed in the Channel islands the year before Lord Nelson
had freed England from the chance of finding the whole French army on
our coast in the flat-bottomed boats that were waiting at Boulogne for
the dark night that never came.
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