No sooner had the monoplane begun to disappear over the northern hills than the impatient Paul demanded the attention of Colonel Howell.
“Colonel,” he began, “I’m almost ashamed to even make the suggestion, but I’ve been watching the men at work on the gusher. They don’t seem able to get a plug into the pipe or to put a cap on the end of it, even with the rigging they’ve managed to set up.”
“We seem to be at the end of our string,” laughed Colonel Howell. “But laymen frequently make suggestions that never occur to professionals. Have you an idea?”
“Not much of a one,” answered Paul diffidently, “but I learned one thing in school—I think it was in what you call ‘Physics.’”
“Speak out,” laughed Colonel Howell. “We’ve utilized all our own ideas; that is, all but one, and I don’t like that. I suppose we can dig a pit around the pipe and smother the blaze. But that’s goin’ to be quite a job, and I’m not sure it would work.”
“A pit!” exclaimed Paul. “Now I’ve got it. They used to tell me, when you strike a force you can’t handle, try to break it up into parts.”
Colonel Howell looked up quickly.
“We don’t need a pit,” went on Paul, “but something like a trench. Let’s dig down alongside the pipe until we’re ten or fifteen feet beneath the ground and then tap the tube and let some of the gas out where it won’t do any harm. If we can’t drill a hole, we can rig up a long-handled chisel and punch an opening. When the gas rushes out, down there in the trench, maybe it won’t catch fire for a few minutes and it’s sure to shut off a good deal of the pressure at the mouth of the tube. If it does, maybe we can get the cap and the regulator on the top. Then we can plug the opening below. It’ll leak, of course, but the regulator’ll fix things so we can use the gas at least.”
Colonel Howell thought a moment and then slapped the young man on the back. Without a word, he hurried to the two workmen and in a few moments Ewen and Miller had begun digging into the frozen ground. Colonel Howell’s orders were for them to make a trench about four feet wide and extending toward the river about twenty feet. It was to be twenty feet deep alongside the pipe and in the form of a triangle, the long side to incline toward the river. This was to facilitate the removal of the gravel and dirt and to afford a path to the deep side of the trench where it touched the gas tubing.
“Five feet from the bottom,” explained the enthusiastic Paul, “we’ll put a shelf across the trench and we’ll work from this, so that when a hole is made in the pipe no one will be in danger from the rush of gas.”