"Once more, Geordie. Together now. Shove with your whole soul." Alec's voice was hoarse, and he spoke through his wildly clenched teeth.
One more fierce struggle they made, as though their very hearts would burst. The great stones tremble; the whole dam sways. It gives, it gives! They feel the stones totter, and clasping each other grimly round the waist, as the mighty swirl of the escaping water almost tears them from their feet, the boys stagger to the edge of the channel.
The dam has given way; the pent-up waters pour along all white and foaming, and the stream, rediverted into its old channel, adds all the force of its great current to the escaping flood. With a loud roar the waters rush forward, sweeping the rocks and stones of the dam along in their resistless strength, and with a noise as of thunder, above which the despairing shrieks of the myalls rise for one brief second, the hapless wretches are torn from their feeble hold of the rock and, swept into the awful rush and crash of the cascade, are flung with the rolling stones of the broken dam, and battered into silence and death upon the frightful rocks below.
CHAPTER XVII.
LEAVING THE VALLEY.
For an instant the two lads lay where they had stumbled together on the bank, but the next they sprang to their feet and rushed to the edge of the cliff, and kneeling down looked over. For a few seconds the roar of the great volume of escaping water and the heavy rolling of the rocks and stones borne along in its current boomed in their ears, but this soon ceased, and only the usual noise of the falling cascade could be heard. The pool could not be refilled, as the opening on the far side of it had not been closed up again, and through this gap the stream flowed out into its old, worn channel.
Four of the myalls lay dead and mangled among the stones beneath the fall, and the body of one lay jammed across the opening in the rocks, through which the water flowed, with his long black hair streaming in the current like a dusky weed. One man only remained alive, and he was bruised and cut and bleeding. He was dragging himself slowly and with difficulty out of the rushing stream, and was evidently so badly hurt that he could hardly stand.
"Oh, Alec, isn't it awful?" said Geordie, with a shudder, as he looked down. "And to think that we have killed those five men."
"It was in self-defence; they would have murdered us without hesitation."
"Yes, I know. But I wish I were at home; I have had enough of death."