The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: tomfoolery. Then there was my gun, and knife, and lantern, and
patent matches, all necessary. And then there was the real plant
of the affair in hand, a mortal weight of gunpowder, a pair of
dynamite fishing-bombs, and two or three pieces of slow match that
I had hauled out of the tin cases and spliced together the best way
I could; for the match was only trade stuff, and a man would be
crazy that trusted it. Altogether, you see, I had the materials of
a pretty good blow-up! Expense was nothing to me; I wanted that
thing done right.
As long as I was in the open, and had the lamp in my house to steer
by, I did well. But when I got to the path, it fell so dark I
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