CHAPTER X
AHEAD OF THE FLOOD
Each one in the little group at the main entrance to the munitionfactory had cried out--no doubt of that! Indeed, Torry said afterwardthat he forgot to shut his mouth until his jaws were positively stiff.
Their fright did not deprive them of action, however; everybodyimmediately did something.
Inside the door, in the hall, hung the bell rope. The bell swung in thecupola on the roof of the office building. The guard dropped his rifleand sprang to seize this rope. He slipped his foot in the loop and beganto toll the bell as hard as he could.
"I'll get Central and tell them what's up!" gasped Mr. Santley, andturned to run back into his office to spread the news of the catastropheby telephone.
Whistler plunged into the car, yelling to Torry:
"Turn around! Turn around! Down the valley road to warn 'em! Get a moveon, boy!"
His chum was already starting the car. It wheeled perilously in a sharpcurve, and with honking horn hurtled down the road which followed thecourse of the river.
Without doubt the wall of the dam had been burst through by theexplosion. The immense mass of waiter held in leash would immediatelypour through the opening. The valley would be flooded!
As the car plunged across the main street of Elmvale people were runningout of their houses and out of the stores, shrieking that the dam hadburst. They began to stream away toward the higher ground, stopping fornone of their possessions. If they saved their lives they would befortunate.
Torry speeded up the car until she vibrated like a motor boat--like thesubmarine chaser, No. 888! They whirled along the half-lit road, thehorn sounding its raucous warning, and the boys shrieking themselveshoarse.
People came to their doors and windows The flying Navy boys pointedbehind them, repeating:
"The flood! The flood!"
The roar of the bursting dam was now in the ears of all the awakenedpeople of the valley. In three great explosions the weakened wall burst,and the water roared through.
Spouting through the wrecked masonry, the boys could see it spread belowthe barrier, half as high as the dam itself. It would sweep the narrowvalley clean of every small structure and of every living thing thatcould not get out of its path.
Half a mile was small leeway; the flood would pour down upon the villageand the mills in two or three minutes. But the Navy boys in the big carwere flying over the road at a forty-mile-an-hour pace.
They could have easily escaped to the high ground on one side or theother of the valley. There were many small farms down this river road,however, and although the valley widened a good deal before theoutskirts of Seacove were reached, the flood might do a deal of damagein the lower town unless the people there were warned.
At least, the automobile and its occupants made noise enough as theyflew along to arouse most people along the way to the menacing peril.The explosion followed by the bursting of the dam had, in any case,shaken the valley to the very sea itself.
They saw men, women and children run screaming from their houses andmount through the fields toward the hilltops. Behind, the roar of thewaters was like a high wind. In a moment all the lights in Elmvale wentout.
"The powerhouse has gone!" shrieked Frenchy, when he saw this.
"And everything else, I guess!" quavered Ikey, clinging to the back ofthe automobile seat and hoarse from shouting.
Dim as the light from the stars and the moon was, they could see thefront of the wave of released water. When it struck the big millbuildings at Elmvale the foamy water sprang up in geysers.
Several of the big buildings went down under the impact of the flood.The smaller hovels were swept off their foundations. Those people whohad not escaped from the middle of the village must be overcome by thesweep of the flood.
Below the Main Street bridge in Elmvale, the channel of the river wasmuch wider than above the bridge. It was navigable for small vessels,too, from Seacove to that point.
Schooners and barges moored to the docks below the bridge were cast upon the crest of the flood, their hawsers snapped like packthread, andthey were whirled away, some to be cast later far back from theestablished bank of the stream.
It was tidewater below the bridge, and fortunately it was low tide. Thechannel of the river, therefore, could take the greater bulk of theflood, and the valley widening so quickly, the depth of the outflow ofthe dam was much decreased directly below the wrecked hamlet.
The rushing automobile was two-thirds of the way to Seacove in fiveminutes. Then the advance wave of the flood caught them.
They saw the saplings along the bank of the stream bend and snap underthe force of the water. Some were uprooted. Chicken houses and othersmall structures were snatched from their places and flung wildly alongwith the charging water.
With a roar and a cloud of spray the water surged around the automobileon the road. Running, as the car was, at top speed, the flood picked itup and drove it forward even more swiftly for several rods.
"Shut her off! Shut her off!" yelled Frenchy excitedly.
But Torry was wiser than that. The water flattened out, and the whirlingwheels bit into the road again. They did not skid, and the car remainedupright. For the next half mile they ran through more than a foot ofwater; but it was plain the danger was over.
Near the river bank the water flooded the first floors of the houses inthe suburbs of Seacove; but there was little other damage done at thisdistance from the dam.
As the water subsided from about them, however, Torry turned themachine around and headed up the road again.
"Yes, we'll go back," Whistler agreed. "Drive slowly, Torry. Maybe wecan help somebody. I'm afraid there were some people who did not getaway in time."
They found enough to do, it was true, all that night. After getting backto the outskirts of Elmvale they could not drive the machine over theslime and mud in the roadway. There were deep washouts, too; and in someplaces the wreck of light buildings barred the way.
The Navy boys had done good service in warning the endangered peoplealong one side of the river. Mr. Santley had done much more in sendingthe news of the broken dam broadcast by telephone. The girl at Centralhad stuck to her post while the water rose to the second floor of thetelephone building, where the switchboard was situated.
Whistler and his three chums were carrying children to the high groundwhere it was dry, and packing bedding and blankets up to the"shipwrecked mess-mates," as Frenchy called them, until dawn.
When the sun crept up and showed the wreckage in the valley, andparticularly about Elmvale, it was enough to make one heartsick. Thelower floors of all mills, and of the munition factory, were wrecked.Some of the buildings had fallen down.
Much machinery was destroyed. It would take months to repair the damagedone to property by the flood. And there was a death list of twelve.That was the hardest to bear and the saddest result of the catastrophe.
Until the ruins around Elmvale were searched and the last body broughtto light, little was said about the cause of the disaster. But thefollowing evening Whistler and his chums were called to the office ofthe sheriff of the county to tell what they knew about the stranger,Blake, who had disappeared just before the dam burst.
He had been seen getting off the train at Elmvale that evening. But hehad disappeared immediately after. He had not returned to the munitionfactory, where the manager, Mr. Santley, was waiting for him; nor had hebeen observed at all after leaving the railroad station.
Later it was proved that he had obtained his position at the factory bythe aid of forged credentials. It was believed that he was rather afamous German inventor who had been living in the United States for someyears. He had an almost uncanny knowledge of mechanics, as well as ofchemistry.
The ingenious little water wheel Whistler had seen at the foot of thedam had probably furnished power for some machine that had been fixedon the face of the dam with a charge of dynamite. This invention hadbeen rigged to explode the dynamite afte
r a certain length of time--timeenough, without doubt, to enable the inventor to get well away from thevicinity of the dam.
"If Linder is his name," Whistler said, when the boys were afterwardtalking it over among themselves, "I hope I'll see him again some time.He was never blown up with the dam, that is sure."
"You don't think he was 'hoist with his own petard, then?" suggestedTorry.
"Hear the high-brow!" sniffed Frenchy.
"Oi, oi!" cried Ikey. "He means was he blown up, too? I bet not!"
"I ought to have told somebody about him before," sighed Whistler."I had a feeling he wasn't using his real name."
"Say! why should you worry? That Mr. Santley didn't think anything wrongof him until he found the letter in German in Blake's locker. And we didset Mr. MacMasters and the S. P. Eight-eighty-eight after him and theoil boat, didn't we?"
"By the way," Whistler suddenly observed, drawing an official lookingletter from his pocket. "Did I tell you I got this?"
"No," said Torry. "What is it?"
"Hurray!" yelled Frenchy, the quick-witted. "It's our assignment to the_Kennebunk_, I bet you!"
"Is that right, Whistler?" asked Torry.
"That's what it is," admitted Morgan. "We're to report, however, to Mr.MacMasters at Rivermouth day after to-morrow. But our ultimatedestination is the _Kennebunk_, superdreadnaught, just built and fittedout for her first cruise. You know, she was only christened a monthago."
Even the Elmvale disaster and the mystery regarding the German spy,Franz Linder, were at once ousted from the minds of the Navy boys. Theirfirst cruise in a superdreadnaught was of much greater importance.
Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns; Or, Sinking the German U-Boats Page 10