Two minutes later there was an explosion, and the tamping-clay flew out and struck Butterwick with some violence in the ribs, curling him all up on the grass by the pump.

When he recovered his breath, he got up and said, "Hang your infernal cat! It's an outrage for you to be endangering the lives of people with your diabolical schemes for getting at a beas' that ought to've been killed long ago." Then Butterwick sullenly got over the fence and went home, and the cat meanwhile kept up a yowling that made everybody's hair stand on end.
Potts said that he made a mistake in not placing the butt of the spout against something solid.

And so, after putting in a couple of pounds of powder, he turned the spout up and rested the end upon the ground, propping it against the pump.

Then he lighted the slow-match, and the crowd scattered.

There was a loud explosion, a general distribution of fragments of tin around the yard, and then out from the upper end of the spout there sailed something black.