When it was over and the table had been cleared, he lay in a canvas chair beside the stove, in which resinous billets snapped and crackled cheerfully. The deluge roared upon the iron roof; the song of the river rose and fell, filling the place with sound; and now and then the pounding and clanking of the pumps broke in.
Vane examined the sheet of figures Salter handed him. Then he carefully turned over some of the pieces of stone the table was partly covered with.
“There’s no doubt those specimens aren’t so promising, and the cost of extraction is going up,” he said at length. “I’ll have a talk with Nairn when I get back, but in the meanwhile it looks as if we were going to have trouble with the water.”
“It’s a thing I’ve been afraid of for some time,” Salter answered. “We can keep down any leakage that comes in through the rocks, though it means driving the pumps hard, but an inrush from the river would beat us.”
Vane let the matter drop, and an hour later he retired to his wooden berth. In a few minutes he was fast asleep, but was awakened by a shrill note, which he recognised as the whistle of the engine. It was sounding the alarm, and next moment he was struggling into his clothing; then the door swung open and Salter stood in the entrance, lantern in hand, with water trickling from him. There was keen anxiety in his expression.
“Flood’s lapping the bank top now,” he said. “There’s a jamb in the narrow place at the head of the rapid, and the water’s backing up. I’m going along with the boys.”
He vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, and Vane dragged on his jacket. If the mine were drowned, operations might be stopped for a considerable time. What was more, it would precipitate a crisis in the affairs of the company and necessitate an increase of its capital, which he would sooner avoid.
He was outside in less than a minute and stood still looking about him, while the deluge lashed his face and beat his clothing against his limbs. He could only make out a blurred mass of climbing trees on one side, and a strip of foam cutting through the black level which he supposed was water, in front of him. His trained ears, however, gave him a little information, for the clamour of the flood was broken by a sharp snapping and crashing, which he knew was made by driftwood driving furiously against the boulders. In that region, the river banks are encumbered here and there with great logs, partly burned by forest fires, reaped by gales, or brought down from the hill-sides by falls of frost-loosened soil. A flood higher than usual sets them floating, and on subsiding sometimes leaves them packed in a gorge or stranded in a shallow to wait for the next big rise. Now they were driving down and, as Salter had said, jambing at the head of the rapid.
Suddenly a column of fierce white radiance leaped up lower down-stream and Vane knew that a big compressed air lamp had been carried to the spot where the driftwood was gathering. Even at a distance, the brightness of the glare dazzled him, so that he could see nothing else when he headed towards it. He collided with a fir stump and struck it with his knee, and in another minute the splashing about his feet warned him that he was entering the water. Having no wish to walk into the main stream, he floundered to one side. He was, however, getting nearer to the blaze, and by and by he made out a swarm of figures scurrying about beneath it. Some of them had saws or axes, for he caught the gleam of steel, and broke into a run; and presently Carroll, whom he had forgotten, came up, calling to him.