We took the vehicles and the cart straight up to the cable terminal. There wasn’t a soul there. Boy went down to the dam and disappeared down concrete steps into the bowels of it. We stood and stared down at the dam, a little bewildered and I think even then with an odd sense of waiting for something. The silence was uncanny. The dam was a flat-topped battlement of concrete flung across the cleft that divided the peaks of Solomon’s Judgment. It was smooth and curved with clean, fresh lines as yet unmarked by weather. On the Thunder Valley side it sloped down like a great wall into the gloom of the cleft. From where we stood we couldn’t see the bottom. It gave me the feeling that it went on dropping down indefinitely till it reached the slide two thousand feet below. On the other side the lake of the Kingdom swept to within a yard or so of the top. The wall of concrete seemed to be leaning into the lake as though straining to hold the weight of the water in check. It was hot in the sunshine as we waited and the air was still, the water lying flat and sultry like a sheet of metal. The noise of water running was the only sound that broke the utter stillness.
Boy came up out of the smooth top of the dam and climbed towards us, a puzzled frown on his sun-tanned face. ‘Not a soul there,’ he said. ‘And all the sluices are fully open.’
‘Isn’t there a phone down in the control room?’ Jean asked.
Boy nodded. ‘I tried it, but I couldn’t get any answer. It seemed dead.’
We stood there for a moment, talking softly, wondering what to do. At length Garry said, ‘Well anyway, the cage is here. We’d better start loading the first truck.’
As Don moved towards the instrument truck there was a sudden splintering sound and then the noise of falling stone. It was followed by a faint shout half-drowned in a roar of water. Then a man came clambering up the sides of the cleft. He was one of the engineers and he was followed by the guards and another engineer. They saw us and came running towards us. Their faces looked white and scared.
‘What’s happened?’ Garry called out.
‘The dam,’ shouted one of the engineers. ‘There’s a crack . . . It’s leaking . . . The whole thing will go any minute.’ He was out of breath and his voice was pitched high with fright.
We stared at him, hardly able to comprehend what he was saying—convinced only by the fear on his face.
‘Can’t you relieve the pressure?’ Boy asked.
‘The sluice gates are wide open already.’
‘Have you told them down below?’ Steve Strachan asked him.
‘No. The phone was cut in that storm the night before last. It’s terrible. I don’t know what to do. There are nearly a hundred men working down on the slide where they’re going to build the power house. What can I do?’ He stood there, wringing his hands hopelessly.
‘What about the phone in the cable house?’ I asked.
‘Yes, yes, of course. But I don’t think there’ll be anyone in the lower housing, not until six this evening.’
Everybody was talking at once now and I watched the engineer as he ran stumbling to the cable terminal. If there was nobody at the bottom to get his warning . . . I looked at the lake. It was six miles or more across and in the centre it would be as deep as the dam was high—over two hundred feet. I thought of the men working down there on the slide, directly in the path of that great sheet of water if the dam collapsed. It would come thundering through the cleft and then fall, millions of tons of it falling two thousand feet; all the water that had fallen on the mountains in twelve hours tumbling over in one great solid sheet. Jean’s hand gripped my arm. ‘What can we do?’ Her voice trembled and I saw by her face that she, too, was picturing that effect of a breach. But the dam looked solid enough. The great sweep of it swung smoothly and uninterruptedly across the cleft. It looked as though it could hold an ocean.
The others were already scrambling down to have a look at the damage. I followed. Johnnie came slithering down with me. And from the top of the dam itself we looked down the smooth face of it to a great jet of water fifty feet long and two or three feet across. It was coming from a jagged rent about halfway down the dam face and all around the hole were great splintering cracks through which the water seeped. Down below at the very foot of the dam the sluice gates added their rush of water.
‘It’s that cement they used on the original dam.’ Johnnie had to shout in my ear to make himself heard above the din of the water. ‘It was old stuff and it’s cracking up. The goldarned fools!’
As we turned away from the appalling sight the engineer who had gone to the hoist to try and telephone came slithering down to us. ‘There’s nobody there,’ he shouted.
‘Can’t you go down and warn them?’ Johnnie asked.
‘There’s nobody down there, I tell you,’ he almost screamed. ‘Nobody hears the telephone. There’s nobody to work the engine.’
I was looking up towards the hoist, remembering the night Jeff and I had examined the cradle together to see if there was a safety device to get the cage down if the engine packed up. ‘How long before this dam goes?’ I asked the engineer.
‘I don’t know. It may go any minute. It may last till we have drained the lake.’
‘It won’t do that. Look.’ Johnnie was peering over the edge, pointing to the great thundering jet of brownish water. It had increased in size appreciably in the last few minutes.
The American newspaper correspondent came along the top of the dam towards us. He had been out in the centre with his photographer who was taking pictures regardless of the danger. ‘Why don’t these guys do something—about the boys down below I mean?’
‘What can we do?’ the engineer demanded petulantly, ‘We’ve no phone, no means of communicating.’
I called to Boy and together we climbed the side of the cleft to the hoist. Jean caught up with us just as I was climbing into the cage. ‘What are you going to do?’ I was already looking up at the cradle, seeing what I needed to knock the pins out that secured the driving cable to it. Her hand gripped my arm. ‘No. For God’s sake, darling. You can’t. They’ll be all right. They’ll have seen that flow of water coming down—’
‘If they have then I’ll stop the cage on the lip of the fault.’ I gently disengaged her fingers. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll be all right.’ She stared at me, her face suddenly white. I think she knew as well as I did that the chances of the men working down there having noticed an increase in the flow of water from the dam were remote. ‘Why you?’ she whispered. ‘Why not one of the men who belong to the dam? It’s their responsibility.’
I turned away and climbed into the cage. I couldn’t explain to her why it was better for me to go. ‘Hand me that bit of timber, Boy.’ He passed it up and I knocked the pins out. As the last one fell to the floor I had my hand on the brake lever. The driving cable dropped free on to the rollers and the cage began to move. I hauled down on the lever and brought the bottom braking wheel into action, forcing the suspension cable up between the two travelling wheels.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ Boy said.
I turned to find Jean clambering into the cage. ‘For God’s sake,’ I cried.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Boy said. His face was white under his tan. I didn’t know it then but he was scared of heights, other than from the air.
‘So am I,’ Jean said.
I stood there, looking at them, wondering how to get rid of them. It was crazy for more than one to go down. There was a rope on the end of the lever and a pulley in the floor.
I slid the rope through the sheaves of the block. Then I called to Boy. ‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘get Jean out of here. Pick her up and throw her out.’
He nodded. I was still holding the rope. ‘Please go, Jean,’ I called to her. But she clung to the side and Boy picked her up, fighting her to get her hands clear, and then, leaning far out, he put her over the side. At that moment I let go the rope, caught him by the legs and tipped him over after her. As he fell the cage began to move. I turned quickly and caught up the ro
pe, applying the brake gently, holding the cradle to a steady run along the cable. Looking back I saw the two of them standing there, watching me. And away to the right, below them, was the great sweep of the dam with the wall all starred with cracks and the brown water spouting from the huge rent. I stared at it, wondering what it would be like up here, hanging in space, if the whole thing burst wide open, imagining the lake pouring through, thundering in a roaring mass only a few feet below my feet and then tumbling in a gigantic, fantastic fall over the lip of the fault.
Then the pylon on the top of the fault was coming towards me and I hauled on the rope, slowing the cradle up to walking pace. Thunder Valley opened out in front of me. I crawled up to the pylon and stopped. I could see the steep, timbered slopes of the valley, the glint of Beaver Dam Lake, but the rocks on the lip of the drop hid the slide. I inched past the pylon. The cradle tipped. I hauled on the rope. The rocks slid away below me and suddenly I was hanging in space and there far below me was the slide with the pylon and beyond it the concrete housing of the hoist. It was all very minute and unreal. The only thing that was real was that ghastly, appalling drop and the fact that the only thing that prevented me crashing the full length of that snaking cable line was this crude brake. I felt my knees beginning to shake. I don’t think I ever have been so frightened of anything in my life. For there below me the slide looked like an ant heap. Everywhere men were moving about, working on the foundations of the power house. I was committed to go down there and if the dam should burst . . . The pylon and the cable housing stood right in the path of the flood. They would be swept away and the cable would swing loose. I should be dashed to pieces against the face of the fault.
It was probably only a few seconds that I hesitated there, not finding the courage to commit myself irrevocably to that awful drop; but it seemed an age. Then at last I eased the tension slightly on the rope and the cage dropped down from the lip, seeming to plunge sickeningly on the steep drop down the cliff face. Nervously I strained at the rope till I was hardly moving. But as I gained confidence in the braking system I let it move faster so that soon I was past the steepest point and levelling out in a long glide towards the pylon on the slide top. Once I looked back, fearful that the dam was breaking up behind me and the pent-up waters of the lake thundering over the edge of the fault, but all I saw was a thin trickle, a slender veil of white wavering and falling, infinitely slowly, to beat in a white froth against the base of the cliff.
The pylon slid by and then I was running almost free to the concrete housing. Below me I saw men pausing in their work to look up at me, faces gleaming white in the sunlight. The heat from the rocks came up and hit me. The warm resinous smell of the pines closed round me. It seemed impossible that disaster should hang over this peaceful scene. I shouted to them that the dam was breaking as I swung over their heads and they stared at me with vacant, uncomprehending expressions. Either they didn’t believe me or they didn’t understand what I was saying, for I started no panic; they just stared at me and then got on with their work. And then I was past them and dropping down to the housing. I slid into it gently and climbed out and started back up the roadway to the site where they were working. I reached a bunch of trucks unloading materials. I yelled to the men around them to get them moving back to the camp where they would be safe. ‘The dam’s breaking up,’ I shouted at them. I climbed to the cab of the first truck and signalled to the men working on the site with the horn. ‘Get back to the camp!’ I shouted to them at the top of my voice. ‘The dam’s going. Get back to the camp!’
My voice seemed a thin reed in the vastness of the place. It was lost in the clatter of the concrete mixers and the din of metal on stone. But here and there men were stopping to stare at me and then talk to the men working near them. One or two dropped their tools and moved towards me. I kept on shouting to them, my throat dry with fear and the sweat running out of every pore. I felt weak with the effort of trying to make them understand. I hadn’t realised it would be so difficult to get them started up to the camp, to safety. But here and there men began to move, and in a moment it seemed the word buzzed through the whole site and they began to move away from the slide towards the timber, slowly, like bewildered sheep.
And then Trevedian was there, shouting at them, telling them to get back to work. ‘What are you?’ he roared at them. ‘A bunch of yellow-bellies to be fooled into hiding away in the woods because this fellow Wetheral is so mad at us for drowning the Kingdom that he comes down here shouting a lot of bloody nonsense about the dam. He’s a screw-ball, you know that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been drilling for oil up there. Now get back to work and don’t be so damned easily fooled.’ He turned and came towards me. ‘You get the hell out of here,’ he shouted. His face was dark with anger.
The men had stopped, hanging uncertainly where they stood. My eyes lifted involuntarily to the cleft between the peaks. Was it my imagination or was the veil of white that wavered down the face of the fault wider and bigger? My legs felt weak and my throat was dry. I had to suppress a great desire to run. I shouted to them again to get clear whilst they could. ‘Do you think I’d risk coming down the hoist on the brakes, leaving my friends up there, if the situation wasn’t serious? There was a hole a yard wide halfway down the dam when I left. It will be a lot bigger now. Any minute the whole thing may collapse. The original structure was built of dud cement.’ I glanced up again at the cleft. ‘Well, if you won’t save yourselves, I can’t help it. I’ve done my best.’ I jumped down from the truck and started to run. I thought that would get them moving. Trevedian thought so, too. I saw him glance quickly at the men. Doubt and uncertainty and the beginnings of fear showed in the faces of some of those nearest to me. He swung back towards me, started forward to intercept me and then stopped. ‘Max!’ His voice was sharp, domineering. ‘Max—stop him!’
I glanced quickly towards the timber. It was about fifty yards away and between me and it stood the huge, bear-like figure of Max Trevedian.
‘Get him, Max!’ Trevedian turned to his men. ‘And you—stay where you are. Are you going to let a crazy coot like this scare you? Why, we’ve only just built the dam. We’ll soon see what all this is about. Max! Get hold of him. I want to talk to him.’
Max had already started forward, moving towards me at a shambling run, his great arms swinging loose. I stopped. ‘Don’t be a fool, Max. It’s Bruce. Remember? Up there in the Kingdom. Stay where you are!’
I tried to talk to him as I would to a child. I tried desperately to get the same authority into my voice as his brother had. But my voice trembled with the urgency of my message and I hadn’t the intimacy of childhood memories. My words failed to get through and he came on, moving surprisingly fast. I heard Trevedian telling his men to stay where they were, telling them he’d soon find out what all this was about, and then my hand touched the gun in my pocket. ‘Max!’ I shouted. ‘For God’s sake stay where you are.’ And as he came steadily on, my fingers, automatically finding the opening to my pocket, slipped in and closed over the butt of the gun. I took it out.
Max was not more than thirty yards from me now. I glanced quickly up towards where the men were standing in a close-packed huddle. They were scared and uncertain. Once Max reached me I knew I’d never get them moving in time. It was Max or them—one man or nearly a hundred. ‘Max!’ I screamed. ‘Stay where you are!’ And then, as he came on, I raised the weapon slowly, took careful aim at his right leg above the knee and fired.
The report was a thin, sharp sound in the rock-strewn valley. Max’s mouth opened, a surprised look on his face. He took two stumbling steps and then pitched forward on to his face and lay there, writhing in pain.
‘You swine! You’ll pay for this.’
I swung round to find Trevedian coming at me. I raised the gun. ‘Get back,’ I said. And then as he stopped I knew I had the situation under control for the moment. ‘Now get out of here, all of you,’ I ordered. ‘Any man who’s still around in one minute fr
om now will get shot. And for God’s sake see you find high ground. Now, get moving.’ To start them I sent a bullet whistling over their heads. They turned then and made for the timber, bunched close together like a herd of stampeding cattle. Only Trevedian and the man who was with him stood their ground. ‘Get your brother out of here to safety,’ I ordered him.
He didn’t move. He was staring at me, his eyes wide and unblinking. ‘You must be crazy,’ he murmured.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I snapped. ‘Come on. Get your brother out of here.’
‘That dam was all right. Government engineers inspected it at every stage. We had engineers in to inspect it before we started the work of completing it.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.’ He turned to the man beside him. ‘We’ll see if we can get them on the hoist phone. If not I’m going up there. Will you run the engine for me?’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said. ‘Every moment you delay——’
‘Oh, go to hell,’ he shouted. ‘Come on, George.’ They started at a run for the cable terminal. For a second I considered firing, trying to stop them. But my fractional hesitation had put them out of effective range. Anyway, what the hell. Maybe he’d make it, and if he didn’t . . .
I turned away and went over to where Max lay with his body doubled up over a big splinter of rock. His face was bloodless and he was unconscious. His right leg was twisted under him and blood was seeping on to the stones, a crimson splash in the sunlight. I got hold of him by the arms and began to drag him over the rocks. He was incredibly heavy. Each time I paused I called towards the line of the trees, hoping one of the men would have the guts to come back and help me. But the timber seemed silent and empty. If anyone heard me, he didn’t come down to help. In shooting Max I had finally convinced them of the urgency of the danger, just as I had convinced Trevedian himself.
Foot by foot I dragged Max’s body along the stone-packed road, up the hill to the timber. Every few yards I had to pause. I heard the diesel start up and saw the cage move out of its staging, Trevedian still working on the cradle, tapping home the pins that locked the driving cable to it.
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