“I was in the army. They turned me out.”
The Vice-Consul made a gesture. “I have nothing to do with the reason for this; but you can see my difficulty. You urge me to meddle with things that require very delicate handling and with which my interference would have to be justified. No doubt, you can imagine the feelings of my superiors when I admitted that I acted upon hints given me by a stranger in the employ of Americans, who owned to having been dismissed from the British army.”
Dick got up, with his face firmly set.
“Very well. There’s no more to be said. I won’t trouble you again.”
Leaving the house, he walked moodily back to the end of the line. The Vice-Consul was a merchant and thought first of his business, which might suffer if he gained the ill-will of corrupt officials. He would, no doubt, move if he were forced, but he would demand incontestable proof, which Dick feared he could not find. Well, he had done his best and been rebuffed, and now the temptation to let the matter drop was strong. To go on would bring him into conflict with Kenwardine, and perhaps end in his losing Clare, but he must go on. For all that, he would leave the Vice-Consul alone and trust to getting some help from his employer’s countrymen. If it could be shown that the enemy was establishing a secret base for naval operations at Adexe, he thought the Americans would protest. The Vice-Consul, however, had been of some service by teaching him the weakness of his position. He must strengthen it by carefully watching what went on, and not interfere until he could do so with effect. Finding the locomotive waiting, he returned to his shack and with an effort fixed his mind upon the plans of some work that he must superintend in the morning.
For the next few days he was busily occupied. A drum of the traveling crane broke and as it could not be replaced for a time, Dick put up an iron derrick of Bethune’s design to lower the concrete blocks into place. They were forced to use such material as they could find, and the gang of peons who handled the chain-tackle made a poor substitute for a steam engine. In consequence, the work progressed slowly and Stuyvesant ordered it to be carried on into the night. Jake and Bethune grumbled, but Dick found the longer hours and extra strain something of a relief. He had now no leisure to indulge in painful thoughts; besides, while he was busy at the dam he could not watch Kenwardine, and his duty to his employer justified his putting off an unpleasant task.
One hot night he stood, soaked with perspiration and dressed in soiled duck clothes, some distance beneath the top of the dam, which broke down to a lower level at the spot. There was no moon, but a row of blast-lamps that grew dimmer as they receded picked out the tall embankment with jets of pulsating flame. Glimmering silvery gray in the light, it cut against the gloom in long sweeping lines, with a molded rib that added a touch of grace where the slope got steeper towards its top. This was Dick’s innovation. He had fought hard for it and when Jake supported him Stuyvesant had written to Fuller, who sanctioned the extra cost. The rib marked the fine contour of the structure and fixed its bold curve upon the eye.
Where the upper surface broke off, two gangs of men stood beside the tackles that trailed away from the foot of the derrick. The flame that leaped with a roar from a lamp on a tripod picked out some of the figures with harsh distinctness, but left the rest dim and blurred. Dick stood eight or nine feet below, with the end of the line, along which the blocks were brought, directly above his head. A piece of rail had been clamped across the metals to prevent the truck running over the edge. Jake stood close by on the downward slope of the dam. Everything was ready for the lowering of the next block, but they had a few minutes to wait.
“That rib’s a great idea,” Jake remarked. “Tones up the whole work; it’s curious what you can do with a flowing line, but it must be run just right. Make it the least too flat and you get harshness, too full and the effect’s vulgarly pretty or voluptuous. Beauty’s severely chaste and I allow, as far as form goes, this dam’s a looker.” He paused and indicated the indigo sky, flaring lights, and sweep of pearly stone. “Then if you want color, you can revel in silver, orange, and blue.”
Dick, who nodded, shared Jake’s admiration. He had helped to build the dam and, in a sense, had come to love it. Any defacement or injury to it would hurt him. Just then a bright, blinking spot emerged from the dark at the other end of the line and increased in radiance as it came forward, flickering along the slope of stone. It was the head-lamp of the locomotive that pushed the massive concrete block they waited for. The block cut off the light immediately in front of and below it, and when the engine, snorting harshly, approached the edge of the gap somebody shouted and steam was cut off. The truck stopped just short of the rail fastened across the line, and Dick looked up.