But the most exciting discovery was in the activities which were going forward. A raft had been made out of the floating cross-ties and bridge timbers, and upon it a gang of men were loading a round iron tank which both of the boys recognized at once as a spare air-compressor receiver. Into one of the tank tappings a long rubber air-hose was screwed, and from the shore end of the hose a length of blasting fuse protruded.
They didn’t have to ask what was going to be done. The chief engineer had accepted the only alternative that he knew of. The iron tank was an immense bomb loaded with explosives, and it was to be sunk and fired at the heel of the dam.
Before either Larry or Dick could say anything—if they had meant to say anything—the raft was pushed off and two of the men jumped aboard of it to paddle it out to where the current would catch it. The two boys were standing immediately behind the chief when he gave Goldrick a curt order.
“Call up Deverney over your emergency wire and tell him again to pass the warning to the O. C. construction boss,” he snapped. “Have him tell Grissby that he has about ten minutes in which to get his men off that trestle and up to high ground.”
There was an unnerving little wait while the telephone call was going in and the answer was returning. Dick was winking hard, and Larry was biting his lip and staring away across the flooded canyon. Then the reply came from Deverney, ’phoned from his post opposite the trestle, and Goldrick repeated it to the chief.
“They won’t stop work. Grissby says for us to go ahead and shoot; that he’s taking a chance that the flood will spend itself before it gets that far down.”
“It is nothing but cold-blooded murder on Grissby’s part,” was Mr. Ackerman’s brittle comment. “Tell Deverney to shout the warning across to the men themselves. Then, if they don’t stampede they’ll have to take what comes. They’ve given us this flood, and we’ve got to get rid of it—and this is the only way.”
It was too much, [the timber raft with its terrific bomb was swinging out into the current]; in another moment it would be too late to stop it. As if they had both been hurled from the same catapult, the two “cubs” flung themselves upon the big, square-shouldered chief of construction, yelling with one voice: “There is another way—we’ve found it!”
[The timber raft with its terrific bomb was swinging out into the current]