They broke open with a stone hatchet some tins of preserved meat, and seemed to enjoy the contents greatly.
The biscuits they didn't care for much, and the cakes of soap which they began to eat could not honestly be said to be an entire success as comestibles.

But while we watched them at these _hors d'oeuvres_ to the banquet at which we were expected to take a prominent part, a straggler came up with some reserve supplies; I saw them; tins of dynamite--we carried dynamite for blowing up the snags that obstructed the narrower reaches of the river.

We watched the thieves crowd around the bearer of the tins, and we saw that the general impression that prevailed in regard to them was that they had come upon some of the most highly concentrated beef they had ever had in their hands.

When they laid the tins among the hot ashes of their fires and began to break them open with their stone hatchets, my engineer thought with me that all the interest there would be in the subsequent proceedings could not possibly compensate us for the waste of precious time which would be entailed by our remaining.

We bolted in spite of our fettered hands, but before we had got more than a couple of hundred yards from the camp, there took place the severest earthquake, coincidental with a thunderstorm and the salute of a battery of a thousand heavy guns.