“How deep?”
“That would depend on your dam. As the water is now standing on the surface nearly everywhere, you would get nearly a foot of water for each twelve inches dam.”
“Four feet here then, would give the same depth through the forest?”
“Practically, unless there is some other place where the water can run off.”
“You are up in all these things,” the young scout continued with a laugh. “I fancy you can tell to an hour, how long it would take for the water to rise until it overflowed the dam again.”
“Not exactly,” the engineer confessed, “since I do not know the exact dimensions of the swamp. But the stream is deep, and the land low. It would fill fast, and in a few days be impassable.”
“There isn’t much stuff here with which to make a dam,” Ira said in a careless tone.
“Oh, yes there is,” the captain insisted. “Give me a half-dozen men, and in a day I could build all that would be needed.”
“I’d like to know how you would do it,” Ira cried.
“No trouble at all,” retorted the officer, warming up to his subject. “Do you see this big tree? I’d cut that down so it would fall across the gorge. Then I’d go on the other side, and fell the big hemlock. It could be done in such a way that it would interlock with the other, and the two trunks, when trimmed, would give you the timbers against which you could place your barricade. That I would build of posts, driving them side by side across the bed of the stream. It won’t take many, and after stuffing the cracks with leaves and moss from the forest, I would pack in dirt and stones from the hillside until it was water-tight. I wish I never had a harder job than that.”