Half an hour later they were picking their way along the embankment at the side of the great drain, now once more filled with salt water, while when they reached the mouth, where a peculiar dank saline odour was perceptible, the two men who had been flitting before them with lanthorns like a couple of will-o’-the-wisps, went cautiously down the crumbling bank, followed by the engineer, and the mischief done was at once plain to see.
Apparently a powerful blast of powder had been placed in the hollow of the stone-work, where the mechanism for opening and closing the great sluice-gates was fixed, and the result of the explosion was a huge chasm in the stone, and one of the gates blown right off, leaving the way for the water free.
A dead silence fell upon the group as the engineer took one of the lanthorns and carefully examined the damage, the squire holding the other light, and peering forward in the darkness till the engineer climbed back to his side.
“They’ve managed it well,” he said bitterly.
“Well!” cried the squire angrily. “I’m not a harsh man, but I’d give a hundred pounds down to see the wretch who did this lying dead in the ruins.”
“Ay, mester,” said Hickathrift in a low hoarse voice; “it be a shaäme. Will it spoil the dreern, and stop all the work?”
“Ay,” said Dave, as he stood leaning upon his pole, which he had brought over his shoulder; “will it stop dreern?”
The two lads leaned forward to hear the answer, and there was a peculiar solemnity in the scene out there in the wild place in the darkness, merely illumined by the two lanthorns.
“Stop the drain!” exclaimed the squire hoarsely, and in a voice full of rage.
“No, my men,” said the engineer coolly. “It will make a job for the carpenters and the masons; but if the madman, or the man with the brains of a mischievous monkey, thinks he is going to stop our great enterprise by such an act as this, he is greatly mistaken. You, Bargle, be here to meet me at daylight with a double gang. Get the piles up here at once, and if we work hard we can have the piles in and an embankment up before the next tide. A few days’ hindrance, Mr Winthorpe, that’s all.”